


The Night Guard

by SpaceWaffleHouseTM



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: A LOT of Angst, F/M, M/M, Modern AU, More Serious Than It Sounds, Movie AU, Night At the Museum AU, That's Not How The Force Works, background stormpilot, canon compliant pre-tfa, combined mythologies, mild crack, this is gonna be weird y'all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-04-23 10:40:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 69,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14330700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceWaffleHouseTM/pseuds/SpaceWaffleHouseTM
Summary: In the fall of 1977, a strange looking spaceship crashed to Earth in the heart of Georgia, bringing with it hard drives displaying the history of a series of wars that had taken place a long time ago in a galaxy far away. Forty one years later, Rey Smith, a former unemployed engineering major takes up a job as the night guard of the Jakku Museum of Space History, the museum erected in the city of Atlanta in order to display all that was found on board the ship, the Millennium Falcon. But the job is more than it seems, for hidden in its hallways is a tablet that brings the whole thing to life at night, and the Jakku Museum’s newest night guard realizes she isn’t protecting the museum from the outside, she’s protecting the outside from the museum. Night at the Museum inspired AU





	1. Act One: Night One

**Author's Note:**

> This is undoubtedly the weirdest thing I've ever written in my entire life. I'm merging two completely different mythologies together and praying it works. I'm pretty sure I was drunk when I came up with this. Anyway, I'm focusing mostly on the sequel trilogy characters, and I believe I've tagged it as such, so if you're not here for that, I'm sorry, but the other guys will definitely make an appearance. ANYWAY... Here goes. And I'm sure the Millenium Falcon can't make it to another galaxy, but for the sake of this insane premise, it's happening...

Rey’s hand slammed down on the off button on her phone, shutting off her alarm as soon as she regained consciousness. A groan left her lips as her eyes opened to the blinding sunlight filtering in through her window. She quickly covered her face with a pillow, stifling another groan as her hangover quickly took hold. A wave of nausea nearly overwhelmed the feeling of “what the fuck happened last night,” as memories slowly flooded back to her.  
  
It took a moment of deep breathing before she was ready to face the light again. Slowly, she removed the pillow, and squinted as the sun hit her eyes, turning her head away from her window. Another groan left her lips as she remembered why she’d set her alarm so early, and regret filled her at the thought of her previous night.  
  
She’d landed an interview at the Jakku Museum of Space History, the somewhat rundown museum located five blocks from her studio apartment. Three days prior she’d seen an ad in the paper stating they were looking for a new night guard, and given her already unhealthy sleeping habits, it didn’t seem like a terrible idea.  
  
The phone call had come in last night just after the sun had set, her mobile ringing like mad as she set down her groceries, and hurried to answer it. The news that she had gotten an interview filled her with a mixture of relief and hope. Maybe now she’d finally be able to stop worrying about paying the bills each month. She’d never be overdue on her rent again.  
  
With a smile the woman on the other end of the line couldn’t see, she accepted the job, and shortly after hung up the phone ready to celebrate her small victory.  
  
It didn’t take her long to rummage through her bags for the bottle of tequila she’d purchased that evening—one she’d initially intended to use as part of her weekly ritual of getting drunk and watching tv she’d begun in college— and pull it out with a gleeful laugh. A smile remained on her face as she poured her drink, not even the sting of the alcohol burning her throat wiping it from her lips. For the first time in a long time, she had felt happy.  
  
She wasn’t feeling that way the morning of the interview. Her head was throbbing too much for her to think, and her vision was blurred and the room was spinning slightly. Oh, how deeply she regretted her decision to continue drunk Thursday as usual.  
  
If it weren’t for the interview she had at half past nine, she wouldn’t have gotten out of bed, but she had just enough motivation to push herself up into a sitting position, and get out of bed. Another wave of nausea quickly overwhelmed her, and she found herself hunched over the toilet, emptying the contents of her stomach into the bowl.  
  
Once she was finished, she hurriedly flushed the toilet, and brushed her teeth before hopping into the shower, the rare occurrence of hot water providing some reprieve from the worst hangover she’d had since she’d graduated from college. She sighed as it washed over her, leaning against the cool, tiled wall as the water seemingly washed away the mistakes of the previous night.  
  
Ten minutes later she stood before her closet, a towel wrapped around her body as she tried to find the most professional looking outfit she owned. She would essentially have to pull something out of thin air, being a theater student with no job didn’t exactly leave money for business clothes, but eventually she settled for a navy blue button down and black skinny jeans. Hopefully no one at the museum would notice or care that they were jeans and not the traditional slacks professional women often wore. Maybe her potential employer would care, maybe they wouldn’t.  
  
She threw on her clothes hurriedly, and headed back into her bathroom to examine her appearance with a clearer head. Considering how terrible she felt, she didn’t look awful. The bags under her eyes were only somewhat visible, slightly more purple than they ought to be, but not absurdly puffy.  
  
She reached for the little bin she kept beneath her sink, and pulled out a tube of concealer, dabbing a little underneath her eyes before trading it for mascara.

Once she finished making herself look presentable, she checked the time on her phone to find that it was already fifteen past nine, and she was in for a twenty minute walk to the museum. “Shit,” she muttered under her breath, grabbing her phone and keys from the sink as she rushed out of her bathroom.  
  
She barely remembered grabbing her purse or her jacket as she slipped onto her building’s agonizingly slow elevator, which usually took up a good five minutes out of any journey she took away from home. The descent to the ground was spent shifting anxiously from her right foot to her left, and checking the time to see how fast she would have to run once she finally reached the ground.  
  
It would turn out to be a god damned sprint. As soon as the doors open, Rey burst forth from the elevator and ran out of her building’s tiny lobby onto the streets of Atlanta, and made a beeline for the museum.  
  
She nearly knocked over several other pedestrians as she barreled down the street, muttering brief apologies to the first few before giving up on the prospect entirely.  
  
When she finally rounded the corner that would lead her to the museum, she sighed, and checked her phone. She still had two minutes, she’d gotten there with a miraculous amount of time to spare. Taking a quick moment to adjust her slightly disheveled appearance, and sip the coffee she’d brought out of her apartment, she then walked toward it, ignoring the remaining wave of nausea that washed over her when she went through the revolving door at the front.  
  
Steadying herself, she made her way to the round desk at the front, trying and failing to not be distracted by the enormous model of the Millenium Falcon hanging above it. Unfortunately for her, it wasn’t the only distraction, either.  
  
A droid whose plaque announced he was BB-8 was proudly displayed on a little podium with ramps running up all four of its sides, as if the lifeless droid would be able to go up and down as it pleased. Even though she knew it couldn’t, and would never be able to move, the sight of it put a smile on Rey’s face, one that stayed there as she approached the receptionist sitting behind the desk.  
  
“Excuse me?” She asked politely, clearing her throat with a cringe upon hearing the raspiness that lined her voice. She waited until the elderly looking woman with glasses akin to those worn in the fifties looked up at her before she continued, “Hi, my name’s Rey Smith, I’ve got an interview with your manager, I believe?”  
  
“Larry?” The woman asked, quirking an eyebrow.  
  
Rey gave her a firm nod, “Yes, um, where should I go?”  
  
The woman turned around, and pointed to a door on the far wall with her right hand, “That’s his office over there, the big, intimidating door with his name on it. Can’t miss it.”  
  
Giving the woman a quick thanks, Rey power walked over to the door, and shifted nervously on her feet before giving it three firm knocks, and waiting patiently for the man on the other side to open it. Mercifully, she didn’t have to wait long. After a moment, an aging man with grey hair and a wiry frame opened the door, and looked down at her through thinly framed glasses. “Rey, I presume?”

  
She smiled and nodded, “Yes sir,” she replied, stepping into the office as she opened the door wider to allow her entrance, “I’m here about the night guard position?”

The man took his seat behind a large, ornate looking desk, and took off his glasses, setting them down on the edge of the desk before he crossed his hands over his chest, “Yes, you are,” he told her, “See, we’ve recently had to fire our nightguard, and we need to fill the position immediately. It is of the utmost importance that this museum not go one night unguarded.”

“Why’s that?”

“Too many valuable things. I’ll show you when we take the tour in a moment, assuming you accept, that is.”

Rey blinked at him. He wasn’t even going to ask her questions, he was just going to let her have this job? It felt like a dream come true, like what she was experiencing couldn’t possibly be real. After weeks and weeks of job hunting, this was just falling into her lap like that? “Of course, I accept, when do I start?”

“Well, we'd like you to start tonight if you can,” Larry told her, then upon seeing her surprised face, he added, “Don’t worry, it doesn’t require much training. Do you know how to turn on a flashlight?”

“Yes?”

“Do you know what number to call if you need the police?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re fine, unless you have a criminal record.”

She thought for a moment, “I got a speeding ticket in high school.”

Larry chuckled, then slowly stood, “My dear, everyone got a speeding ticket in high school,” he assured her, then he reached out his hand, “Welcome to the Jakku Museum of Space History, Miss. Smith.”

Rey shook his hand, “The pleasure’s mine, sir.”

She was given another smile, then her new boss walked out from behind his desk, and gestured for her to follow him as he began his tour. He led her past the lobby into the first floor corridor, where she was immediately met with an enlarged photograph on the wall of scientists surrounding a crashed ship.

“I trust you know the story behind this museum, my dear?” Larry asked as they walked past the photo, and toward the other displays on the museum’s first floor.

She shrugged, “Sort of, it’s been awhile since I read anything about the crash.”

Larry nodded politely, and led her past a glass encased, miniaturized Millenium Falcon, “In 1977, a strange sight was spotted over Atlanta. People all over the city and it’s surrounding regions were pouring out of their homes onto the streets as something streamed across the sky. At first, it was thought to be a meteor…”

“But it was a ship.”

“It was a ship. The name of the ship was later discovered to be the Millenium Falcon, at least, that’s what they discovered from the information stored on the ship’s computer. That, amongst everything else we’ve learned about the galaxy the ship came from. It took them years to translate the language, but if they could translate Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, they could translate that.”

“Wasn’t there a pilot? I read somewhere they found a body.”

“They did, but they couldn’t tell who it was, the body had become so mangled in the crash, and with nothing to compare the DNA to, there was no telling where the man came from.”

“It was a man?”

“They were able to discern that much, but no one knows who he is or why he flew the Falcon out as far as he did. I’ve done a lot of speculation as to why… Especially with… Never mind.”

Rey looked at him confusedly, “Especially with what, sir?”

Larry didn’t answer her as they passed another display, this one showcasing what Larry explained to be miniature x-wings and TIE fighters, each appearing to be in flight, the former firing down on the latter while the latter fired down on the miniaturized people below in some sort of nighttime desert. She couldn’t quite place the odd feeling she got when she looked at their positions, for whomever had placed them had clearly taken great care. Each one of the small figures looked like they were genuinely terrified and running for their lives, some even had scared expressions on their faces.

Her boss continued to explain the Millenium Falcon’s story as they walked, passing more and more displays with miniaturized people and spaceships, “Once they realized how much was on there, they shipped the information to some scientists in Washington, and a somewhat clear history was made out.”

“What history is that, exactly?” Rey asked, knowing only so little about what had happened so long ago in that galaxy so far away.

A subtle, but present grin arose on Larry’s face, “I’ll show you,” he told her, then she was being led up a staircase, and onto the second level of the museum to begin the next leg of the tour.

As the tour went on, she was reminded more and more of the stories she’d grown up hearing. She relistened to the story of Anakin Skywalker, the man who had started off as a Jedi believed to be some chosen one, and became one of the darkest sith lords. In the records they’d found on board the Millenium Falcon, however, Luke Skywalker had said he’d turned back to the light in his final moments, and saved his life. At least, according to the files they’d found on the Falcon.

She relearned the story of all the Skywalkers as they went, the stories of Poe Dameron and the Resistance, the stories of the Rogue One crew, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Han Solo. When they passed the wax figure of the younger version of Han, Rey noticed that a thin layer of dust coating the shoulders of his black vest, and Larry sighed, “The museum’s not what it used to be, he’s a little scruffy looking now, but I guess not even Han Solo can bring guests.”

Eventually, they finished their tour, just as the museum was closing, and returned to Larry’s office where she was given a sleek, black uniform, “These are yours,” Larry told her, “Get changed, then I’ll give you the instruction manual. Then I’ll have to be on my way, I’m afraid, it’s nearly sundown.”

Rey smiled at him, and rushed into the nearby bathroom to get changed. Her heart was racing the whole time as she took the greyblazer with the museum’s logo embroidered in a patch on the side, a pair of professional looking grey slacks, and a black, button down shirt that looked fancier than anything she presently owned. Well, just about anything looked fancier than all the clothes she possessed by default, since she obtained all of her clothes from the local Goodwill.

She shook her head, then she changed out of her clothes, and into her work uniform. A minute later she emerged from her bathroom stall, and stared at herself in the mirror. She looked more professional than she ever looked before, and she loved it. If only she could get a job in what she’d spent four years earning a degree in, that would make her life even better.

When she emerged from the bathroom, Larry was bidding the receptionist farewell as she walked out the doors. She walked up to him and did a spin to show off her new outfit, which earned her a chuckle. “Enjoying yourself?”

She grinned, “I might be, um, thank you again for accepting my application,” she said, “You’ve saved me from eviction.”

“No, thank you, Miss. Smith for saving me from having to take on the night guard role.”

Still processing everything she’d seen, Rey gave her boss a nod as she stared around the lobby of her new workplace. She tugged on the lapel of her work blazer, straightening it out as Larry gave her a few last minute tips, including an instruction manual which she intended to read thoroughly. A job with too few rules was too good to be true.

Larry handed her a flashlight, then he looked outside nervously, “Well, the sun’s nearly down, so I’d beat be going. Just remember, read the instruction manual, and you’ll be fine.”

Rey smiled, “Don’t worry, I can handle it. Your museum’s in good hands.”

Her boss returned the smile, then he looked outside again, and tipped his hat to her, “Good luck, Rey,” he said, his expression firm and serious as he finally turned, and walked out the door.

Once he was gone, Rey reached into her back pocket, and grabbed the keys he’d handed her before she set about locking the doors to all the exits as Larry had instructed her. When she finished with that, she returned to the front desk, patting the BB-8 statue on the head as she did so before she sat down, and opened the instruction manual.

The manual began like normal, starting with the one thing she’d already done; lock up the doors. The second instruction was to lock up the Ewoks, claiming they liked to run around. Rey’s brows furrowed at that. _How the hell would wax figures with fur be running around?_

She didn’t question it, reasoning with herself that it was probably just her boss interjecting humor into the instructions, and she stood up to lock up the Ewoks. If memory served, they were on the second floor of the museum next to a display of the rebellion celebrating their victory over the Empire.

With a sigh, she stood up to begin her task of locking up the Ewoks and the other creatures listed under instructions two to five, barely noticing that the droid keeping her company was no longer on his pedestal. When she did notice, she stopped walking toward the central stairwell, and turned around slowly to see that the droid was indeed gone.

She blanched as she looked around desperately for the droid, “What the hell?” She asked, rushing back to where it had stood just moments earlier, with the last of the sun’s rays reflecting off its white surface.

It was impossible. The damn thing couldn’t just be gone, she’s locked up every door to the museum. There was no way anyone would’ve been able to sneak in and steal it without her watching unless they were already in the museum, and she had just checked with Larry. There was no one in there but her, so unless the thing moved itself…

Just as that last thought crossed her mind, she heard a quiet, rumbling sound, and she swallowed nervously as she tuned her ears into the noise. It came from behind her, and sounded as if someone had rolled a bowling ball on the hardwood floors of the museum. The noise got closer and closer, and just as she whirled around, it stopped. She looked around in confusion, seeing nothing there… until she looked down.

There, sitting patiently at her feet, beeping and twittering away, was the droid.

She heard a scream, and it took a second before she realized it was her own as she stumbled back against the desk. The droid beeped worriedly as it followed her, fretting about her space as of checking to see if she was hurt. “What the hell?” She asked, bending down to its level to examine it further.

It was a trick, it had to be. There was no other rational explanation for why this droid had come to life in front of her. Someone must’ve been controlling it with a remote of some sort, they had to be. Perhaps Larry was still hidden away somewhere, playing a prank on his new employee. Though he seemed an eccentric fellow, this sort of prank seemed below him, and she shook the thought from her mind.

“How are you doing this, then?” Rey asked the little creature, reaching out to it, “Hmm? Who’s driving you?”

The droid bumped its head into the palm of her hand. She couldn’t help the smile that followed as she rubbed the top of its head, then she stood up, reaching for her instruction manual once again, “Right, well, I need to lock up the animals and apparently the entire fifth floor…”

She froze where she was reading, for the instruction just under the one telling her to lock up the animals was “pet BB-8, let him follow you if he wants to.”

Staring down at the droid, she looked up at the other instructions where she was warned to lock up the animals, and a sinking feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. Before she could read further to answer the questions forming in her mind, she heard the distant sounds of men shouting, and noises that sounded oddly like gunfire despite being much higher in pitch. Overhead, a stomping of sorts echoed throughout the halls, and her eyes widened in fear.

_What the hell is happening?_

Rey immediately rushed for the elevator, allowing the little droid to follow her inside as she slammed the button for the second floor, then pressed the “close doors,” button more times than necessary. Once the doors opened, she stepped out onto the second floor into chaos.

The moment she stepped out of the elevator, she was surrounded by stormtroopers, their blasters pointed angrily at her face as they glared at her through their helmets. “Halt! Who are you?” One of them cried.

Rey put her hands up and pressed herself against the elevator, nearly tripping over BB-8 as she did so. Her heart raced at the speed of sound as she stared down their weapons. All she could think was, _impossible, this is impossible._

But it was real, it was right in front of her. Somehow, she wasn’t sure exactly, the museum had come to life, and now the stormtroopers whose costumes she’d mocked earlier were pointing their weapons at her face. She didn’t want to know if they were actually able to fire. “I’m… I’m Rey,” she told them after a moment, “I’m… I’m the new night guard.”

“What happened to the old one?” Another trooper asked.

“Where’s Sebastian?”

“What did you do to him?”

Their questions grew into shouts, and the blasters were pointed even closer toward her face. Rey feared for her life if those triggers were pulled, until suddenly she felt a hand on her wrist, and she turned to stare into a pair of friendly looking brown eyes, “Follow me,” the man said, then she was being dragged out from under the stormtroopers’ aggressive blaster hold, and out into the hallways of the museum, BB-8 and blaster fire both hot on her heels as she ran for dear life, never once letting go of the hand holding onto hers.

Once they were out of range of the blaster fire, Rey turned and looked at her rescuer while they ran. He was a bit taller than her, and rather handsome if she were being perfectly honest. He had a head of short, but wavy dark hair and wore a beige colored jacket with the red symbol of the resistance on the sleeve. He must’ve been one of the good guys, she supposed as he led her into a second elevator, and pressed the button for the third floor.

“Who are you?” She asked as they ran, though she felt recognition dawning on her as she looked at him. She would swear she’d seen him at one point during her tour earlier...

“Commander Poe Dameron, the resistance’s best pilot,” he replied smugly as their run became a walk. He looked cautiously over his shoulder, as if making sure they weren’t being followed, then he continued leading her through the exhibits, most of them mercifully behind glass.

Rey’s eyes widened a little, “Right! I saw you when I took the tour earlier,” she told him, “I’m the—”

“New night guard, I know,” Poe said, leading her around a corner, then he chuckled, “He does this every time we get a new night guard.”

“Who does what?”

“Larry. Every time a new night guard comes in, he conveniently forgets to warn them about the museum’s night life.”

“No kidding!” Rey cried as the elevator came to a stop, and the doors opened to a hallway decked out with resistance symbols, the hallway she recognized as belonging to the key members of the resistance. At the end of it, she could even see its key players gathered around a table as if they were still plotting for battle, “But what’s happening? Why’s the museum alive? How am I talking to you?”

Poe let out another chuckle, “The others have asked the same questions, though not necessarily in that order.”

The night guard nodded, pretending like all this was making perfect sense when she was still convinced she would blink and find herself asleep at the front desk, none of her tasks completed— _her tasks._ She remembered the instruction manual she held in her free hand, and she froze in her tracks.

“You alright? I know it’s a lot to take in,” Poe said, smiling kindly at her.

Rey nodded, and pointed to the manual in her hand, “I just haven’t gotten started on this just yet. How important is it that the Ewoks be locked up?”

Poe shook his head, “Not very, they’ve gotten better at staying put over the last thirty years. Honestly, don’t worry too much about locking up the creatures. The only one you really need to concern yourself with is the fifth floor.” His gaze became deadly serious in that last sentence, his voice almost trembling as he mentioned the floor that Larry had been hesitant to briefly show her earlier.

“The floor with… Snoke?”

“Yes,” Poe said, “Lock it up, but you can’t ever go alone. Did you notice how the fifth floor requires a key on the elevator? You can’t get to it through after hours. Larry always locks them for you on the first night. Well, except for the main entrance, that he always leaves.” He led her to the end of the hallway, and they took a right as they walked up a staircase to the fourth floor, “Don’t worry, buddy, I’ll be right back,” he promised the droid, and it beeped happily as it sat at the bottom of the stairs waiting patiently for his friend.

“So the fourth floor, that’s just stormtroopers, other first order members, Darth Vader, and Kylo something?”

“Kylo Ren and his knights,” Poe answered as they climbed, “Not a nice guy, but nowhere near as bad as Snoke. Still, you better hope you don’t run into him.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Poe kept a hand protectively on her arm as they reached the top of the stairs, then he led her down a corridor that took them to the black doors marking the entrance to the fifth floor. One of two floors belonging to the apparently notorious first order, but the only one containing Snoke.

Just standing in front of the doors gave Rey a bad feeling as she looked up the carpeted stairs just beyond the doorway. Red lights shone down on her from above, casting an ominous glow over the entire hallway. She swallowed nervously as she reached into her pocket for the keys, producing them with a shaky hand that Poe easily caught.

“Don’t worry, they haven’t tried to come out yet, they usually take a while,” Poe told her, resting a firm hand on her shoulder, “I’ll keep watch.”

She smiled at him, surprised by how quick she was to trust this strange, previously made of wax man, then she reached for the doors and pulled them shut. Without saying another word, she locked them, and looked at Poe expectantly.

“You’re a natural,” he told her kindly, then he took her arm, and led her back down the corridor to the staircase they’d initially come up. Mercifully, there weren’t any exhibits here to give them trouble, just paintings and first order and empire insignias adorning the walls. They made it back down to the third floor without much effort, and Poe looked delighted to find BB-8 still waiting for him at the bottom.

With that, the two of them and the droid headed back down the hallway, and Poe led her back to that hallway that had been decked out in resistance gear, the people surrounding it still appearing as if they were deep in conversation, discussing some important battle strategy.

“So what’s next on the instruction list?”

Rey took the list out from where she’d tucked it into her arm, “Number seven, Get to know the people, a lot of them won’t trust you at first, but once you tell them you’re the night guard, you’ll be fine.”

“Alright, I can help you do that, what’s next?”

“If the second floor Han and second floor Leia are bickering, leave them be.”

Poe chuckled, “Finally. They’ve been telling night guards to put a stop to that for years.”

“Do they do it a lot?”

“No, but when they do it’s really better if you stay out of it,” Poe said, then he smiled as they approach the table the resistance members were all bunched over, “Let’s get started on number seven. Excuse me, everyone!”

The heads of everyone at the table turned to look at Rey and Poe, and the former of the two suddenly felt very small. Mercifully, Poe did all the talking for her. “Everyone, I want to introduce you to Rey, she’s our new night guard.”

Smiles grew on the faces of the resistance, and some waved as Rey gave them an awkward, “hi.”

“Rey, these are the finest men and women you will ever meet,” Poe started, then he branched off into naming everyone around the table until he got to the elegant looking older woman at the center, “And at the heart of it all, General Leia Organa.”

The general came around the table, and offered her hand out to Rey, who stared at her flustered, having heard the stories of what she’d accomplished throughout the day, “It’s an honor to meet you,” she said as she shook the woman’s hand, “I’ve heard the stories.”

Leia smiled, “So the manager told you about me, then?”

“He told me about all of you,” Rey said, looking around the room awestruck that they were actually standing there blinking back at her, and not standing stiff as wax figures, “But I didn’t know…”

The general frowned, then looked back at Poe, “Did he not tell her what happens when the sun goes down?”

“Has he ever told any of them?” Poe asked.

“Fair point.”

“How many night guards have you had?” Rey said incredulously, “How many have there been before me? How many people know about this?”

Poe looked at her sympathetically, then he gestured to the others, “Hey guys, if you wouldn’t mind giving Rey some space, the general and I will take it from here.”

With that, the other residents of the resistance wing of the museum began to disperse, leaving Rey with just Leia and Poe, and a stunned expression on her face as she was sat down against a display. “So where’s Han?” Poe asked, “I thought he said he’d be up here tonight.”

“He went off to try and break into the Falcon replica again.”

“He knows it won’t open right? It hasn’t opened for any of us in thirty something years?”

“He knows. He just thinks he can do it before his younger self does.”

As Leia and Poe laughed, Rey rubbed her temples as a massive headache came on. She heard another rolling sound as the little droid, BB-8 came up to her feet, and looked up at her expectantly. “What?” she asked it.

“He likes scratches,” Poe explained, bending down, and petting the droid as if it were a dog, “And he’s not shy around strangers.”

Rey took in several deep breaths, trying to prevent herself from becoming hysterical with fright. It was impossible. All of it was impossible. How the hell was this happening? She was hallucinating, she had to be. It was all she could think about as she bent down, and gave the droid a scratch on its little head. BB-8 beeped happily in return, and Rey smiled at it before she looked back up at Leia and Poe.

“How is this happening?” she asked, “How is it that you all come to life every night, and no one knows about it?”

“It’s the city’s best kept secret,” Leia explained, “When the museum was first built thirty eight years ago, they put all of us in here along with the artifacts they gathered from the Falcon. But they failed to realize that one of those artifacts had a certain… ability.”

“Needless to say the first night guards were in for one hell of a shock,” Poe continued, “Every night when the sun went down, we came to life, and every time the sun rose, we were back to wax. It’s been that way for thirty eight years.”

Rey let out a shuddering breath, and her eyebrows furrowed in confusion, “What artifact?” she asked, “And where’s the Falcon now?”

“The Falcon? Hidden in some military warehouse supposedly,” Poe replied, then he looked at Leia, “The artifact on the other hand…”

“It’s on this floor,” she finished, “It has its own hallway and everything, but the hallway is closed off, never given on tours. All that you see is the doors leading up to it. They closed it down fifteen years ago when Snoke and the first order last attempted to get their hands on the tablet.”

Rey nodded slowly, “Why do they want it?”

Poe looked at Leia nervously, “None of us know why, but whoever sent the Falcon here sent that tablet with us. See, what brings us to life every night? It’s called the force.”

“The force?” Rey repeated, remembering what she’d heard of it in the stories she’d grown up hearing and relearned that day. Remembering what she’d been told of Sith and Jedi, of the people who were able to wield its power..

He gave her a nod, “Yes, the force. It’s something in the galaxy we come from that the general can explain better than I can, but basically, we have it there, it’s not so present here. That’s the general idea.

“Snoke wants that tablet, and whatever he wants it for, it’s not good. None of us can remember the final months of our lives, only what the data carries up to, which is about two years before the Falcon crash landed here. At least, that’s the estimate they’ve come up with. Nobody knows who sent the Falcon here or why. Or how it ended up here. A journey across multiple galaxies? It should have been impossible, but someone managed to do it.”

“We should show her, Poe,” Leia said, “Well, you should show her, I have troops to command.” She turned to Rey, “Any night could be the night Snoke manages to tear down those doors and do his worst.”

The commander smiled at Rey, then he held out his hand, “Come with me,” he said, then when she hesitated he sighed, “It’s your first night, you need someone who knows what things are like around here.”

Rey took his hand, seeing no reason not to trust him. He’d done nothing but help her so far. His grin remained on his face as he helped her up, and bid the general farewell before he led Rey down the hall toward the tablet’s exhibit, the little droid rolling along enthusiastically ahead of them.

The two spent the journey bonding, though it wasn’t a terribly long journey, and they arrived several minutes later at a pair of black painted doors that had a do not enter sign on them along with a lock, though lights appeared to be on inside. The sight of it gave Rey pause, but at the same time the room felt like it was calling out to her almost, like she needed to be in it.

“There’s a stormtrooper inside, he guards it,” Poe explained, “They placed him here fifteen years ago when Snoke first tried to get his hands on the tablet, since he deserted the first order. His penance for all his wrong doings before hand is to stay in that uniform, and guard the tablet to make sure it never happens again.”

“He just stays in there night after night?”

“Yep,” Poe replied, popping the p, “We have to knock to be let in, otherwise we’re stuck out here.” With that, Poe knocked on the door, tapping on it three times before they heard the sound of footsteps approaching them, and the door opened to reveal another stormtrooper. This one didn’t raise his blaster to them or even make the vaguest of threats. He simply sized them up for a moment, and allowed them entrance into an ornately decorated, gold and black hallway.

The hallway was at least a hundred feet in length, and along the walls about every fifteen feet or so were five golden pillars adorned with various symbols. Some pillars carried Resistance or Rebel symbols, others carried that of the empire and the First Order. All of them were a good fifteen feet in height from the floor to the ceiling, and Rey gasped as she laid eyes on where they met the high arch of the ceiling, which wasn’t just any ordinary ceiling.

Painted on the ceiling above was a map of the galaxy’s various star systems, the galaxy that the Millenium Falcon had come from. Rey stared up at it in awe, “Who painted this?” she asked as they walked past the stormtrooper, who gave them a subtle nod as they passed.

“A lot of people,” Poe answered her, “They found a map on the Falcon’s computers.”

Another shuddering breath left Rey’s lips as they walked further down the hall, her eyes at long last landing on the golden tablet resting a good five feet behind a velvet rope at the end. A curiosity overwhelmed her as she approached it, feeling as if she were compelled to get closer. Before she knew it, she’d reached the velvet rope at the hallway’s end, and Poe was having to put his hands on her shoulders to stop her.

“You feel it don’t you?” Poe asked beside her, “The pull of the force?”

“It’s impossible…"

“The tablet makes it possible,” the commander replied, stepping between Rey and the velvet rope that separated her from the tablet.

As Poe stepped into Rey’s line of sight,  her eyes instantly drifted to him, “I don’t know much about it, but I’ve heard Leia explain it enough over the years that I have a vague idea. Someone in our galaxy, someone powerful, made this tablet into a conduit for the force. We don’t know why, and we don’t know how. All we know is that it’s here, and it brings us to life at night.”

Rey’s eyes fell back on the tablet. It was golden in color, and it had a series of drawings resembling ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics on the nine, button like squares that were carved into it. What Leia had called the force—the thing she’d always grown up hearing about as a myth since she’d first heard the legend of the Millenium Falcon—was positively swirling around it, calling out to her. It seemed like the tablet was glowing, as if it were emitting a golden light that beckoned her towards it. She wondered vaguely if this was why it was kept in this secret hall, guarded by this one, lone stormtrooper and a velvet rope.

“We also know that Snoke wants it, badly.” Poe turned to face the tablet himself, now, his eyes washing over it with a curious wonder that somehow he’d maintained through nearly forty years of existing in this museum, “All his efforts to get it have baffled us. We don’t know why he wants it so badly, but we know it’s not good. We’re just grateful that he can’t actually use the force like he could back home.”

“Do you have any theories?” Rey asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Several, but I doubt any of them are correct.” The commander glanced at the tablet once more, then he turned away, and began to walk back down the hall.

“Where are you going?”

“To show you the rest of the museum,” Poe replied as she hurried after him, “You need to bond with your people, Rey.”

Head still somewhat dizzy from the fact that they all came to life, she gave him a firm nod, and began to follow Poe around the museum. Together they explored all of the museum’s various wings, save for the fifth floor, which she knew would always be off limits at night.

She got introduced to the members of the rebellion from thirty years prior to Poe’s time on the second floor first, meeting a young Han Solo and a Leia who didn’t appear to be much older than she was. It was possible they were even the same age. When she asked, Leia told her that when it all went down, she’d been nineteen when it first started, and twenty three by the end of it. The twenty three year old Rey left the encounter feeling shocked when Poe took her down the hall to meet Luke Skywalker, the brother that Leia had been unable to stop gushing about once they got her to stop talking about her passion for her cause.

“So you’re the new night guard, huh?” Luke asked her, blue eyes twinkling as he swung one of the museum’s lightsabers at a column. He’d maintained that it was important to practice fighting at all times, and over the years at the museum he’d been steadily teaching the others who lived within its walls how to use the weapons adorning them.

“Yeah, I am,” she replied, “So you’re Luke Skywalker, huh?”

They shared a laugh that Poe was quick to join in on, “You know, Luke, if you’ve got time we should really show our new night guard how to use these. The flashlight isn't the greatest weapon against someone like Kylo Ren or Vader.”

“Use them? They’re just…” The lightsabers that the museum had on the walls were by day just odd looking blades that could light up in different colors when one pressed the button on the sides, but by night… The saber’s beam more closely resembled that of the paintings and images that adorned the walls of the old sith and jedi when they engaged in battle, but it still did not scorch the walls the way Rey thought it would.

Luke, as if reading her thoughts, moved his blade so that he poked her with the end of it, “It’s a projection,” he explained, as a mild stinging sensation ruptured from where his blade made contact with the slightly exposed skin of her collarbone, “I’m not sure how it works, but it’s a small sort of electric field that lets the blade become corporeal, but it’s not a kyber crystal. It can’t do what the lightsabers from our galaxy could.”

“What happened to your galaxy?” Rey wondered aloud as Luke pulled his blade away, and extinguished it, the blade returning to its normal appearance of just glass and steel.

He and Poe exchanged a look, then shook their heads, “No one knows,” he replied, “They’ve never found evidence of what happened in the final year before the Falcon took off from our galaxy. It’s been impossible to figure out why we’re here.”

“We’ve had fun speculating about it over the years.” Poe crossed in front of her, and leaned up against the column that Luke had been training on for the past ten minutes, “I’ve always thought if we could figure out who managed to pilot the Falcon all the way out here, we’d know what happened. Whoever piloted that ship—assuming they remembered it—would know everything.”

“Han likes to think it’s him,” Luke said with a hint of a smirk on his features, “He thinks no one else would’ve managed to pilot the Falcon that far out but him."

“Only a Solo would be able to fly the Falcon properly, Luke,” a familiar voice replied from behind her, and Rey turned around to see Han staring at his friend with his arms crossed smugly over his chest, “Both my older self and I agree. Apparently I’ve flown it for more than thirty years. It had to be me.”

“You would agree with yourself, wouldn’t you?”

“You know who I think it was? Me,” Poe interjected, “I’m the best pilot in the resistance, and by the time the Falcon left the galaxy, you would’ve been in your seventies, Han. I doubt it was you.”

“Kid, I could’ve been centuries old, and I still would’ve been the best pilot of that damn ship.”

“Then why’d you crash?” Luke replied, causing Han to ruffle his hair teasingly as he pulled him into a half nelson.

Rey laughed wholeheartedly, living for the hilarious banter the men were engaging in. Bonding with the citizens of her museum was surprisingly easy, and she found herself feeling like she’d known them for years as the hours passed, and they grew closer.

She and Poe left the hallway a few minutes later with the promise that she’d return to Luke the next night to begin the lightsaber lessons she’d no doubt have to take to survive her tenure at the museum.

“Wow, we only have an hour until sunrise,” Poe said, looking around the hall as they headed back up the stairs toward the resistance’s floor, where his display was located.

“Are you serious?” Rey asked, checking the time on her phone. It was indeed already half past five, and the sun was set to rise at half past six. The clock on her phone ticked to five thirty one, and she sighed, “So what happens when the sun rises?”

“We all head back to our spots,” Poe replied, then he sighed, “It’s like an urge you get in your head, and it’s the only thing you can think about, so you do it. Hardly any of us can resist it, but when we’ve been able to, I’ll tell you, it’s caused the night guards some grief over the years.”

“Have you ever tried to go outside of the museum?”

“We can, yeah, but we have to be back by sunrise or…”

“What happens?”

“We turn to dust.”

“Dust?”

“Dust.”

An image of the man standing before her came to mind, standing outside on one of the many Peachtree streets the city held dear as the sun illuminated his face, and he slowly crumbled into just a lump of brown dust. No other trace would be left behind that he’d ever been a man at all, not that he’d even been a man in the first place.

He was made of wax. They were all made of wax, and yet the way she’d struck up a friendship with him that night made her feel like they were real. At some point in time, she realized, they had indeed been real, but all of these people were long dead, and it felt almost like she was talking with ghosts.

“I’d best get talking to the general before the sunrise,” Poe said suddenly, looking over at where the resistance members were scattered throughout the hallway, various conversations overlapping in her ears, “You should go make the rounds, the instruction manual will tell you what to do.”

“You’re leaving?” Rey asked, uncomfortable at the thought of once again being in the museum without a guide.

Poe patted her upper arm, “Don’t worry, the sun rises in less than an hour, I don’t think anyone will give you trouble this late at night, but… Keep watch just in case.”

“I’m the night guard, I think that’s in the job description.” They exchanged another round of laughter, then Poe bid her good day, and she retrieved the instruction manual from her pocket.

The rounds she had to make were simple. She had to go back up to the fourth floor, and make sure the doors were once again locked and Snoke wasn’t out and about wreaking havoc on the museum. Then she’d check the floors one by one to make sure all patrons were at least in the general area of where they needed to be when the sun finally did come up in fifty five minutes. Once that was done, she could return to her desk, and clock out before heading home for the day.

She set to work on returning to the fourth floor, one of the two first order floors Poe hadn’t elected to show her. He’d told her it was because she shouldn’t head up there without any proper training first, which seemed like sound logic, but she was heading up there anyway--however brief her stay would be. She walked into the elevator, and stepped out into the hall, looking back and forth to make sure there was no one there to ambush her.

Seeing no one, her shoulders relaxed some, but she still gripped her flashlight firmly in her hand, prepared to use it as a weapon to fend off any first order or empire fighter who decided to mess with her as she made his brief trip on her rounds. No one came at her as she approached the sinister looking doors that led to the fifth floor, which were mercifully still locked. No one came at her as she walked away and headed back down the corridor to the stairs.

It was only when she rounded the corner to the hallway that the stairs were on that she finally stumbled upon a group of six, wicked looking masked figures all wearing black. At the center of them all was the man who’d been talked up as the most evil figure beneath the fifth floor, Kylo Ren, standing menacingly before her with his lightsaber drawn, its red color spilling out not only from the blade, but from the hilt, sticking out from the sides of the blade in a rather peculiar way. She froze as his gaze landed on her. She couldn’t see his eyes beneath the helmet he wore, but she knew he and the other masked figures—hadn’t Larry and Poe referred to them as the knights of Ren— leered at her from behind their masks.  

She swallowed nervously, knowing at some point this standoff would have to be broken. They only had forty five minutes left until sunrise now, the sky outside had already started to turn from black into a dim gray. One way or another, this would end, but she desperately hoped it would do so before the sun rose. She didn’t fancy sitting in that one spot for forty five more minutes.

Tightening her grip on her flashlight, Rey cleared her throat, “Let me pass,” she ordered them, “I’m just making the rounds…”

“Who are you?” the man—Kylo, she reminded herself—at the center asked in a distorted voice, his head cocked slightly to the side as he peered at her curiously. He took a step toward her, and she took one back.

“I asked you to move,” Rey told him firmly, trying not to let fear make its way into her voice as his sinister presence filled her mind with what she could almost describe as terror.

Kylo Ren, it appeared, could see right through her and they’d only just met, “And I asked you a question,” he replied, and she swore she could see a smirk behind that mask as he stepped even closer to her, his knights hanging back as he approached, his saber held loosely at his side.

The closer he got, the more she observed how ridiculously tall he was. She wasn’t exactly short, she stood at a solid five foot seven, and was taller than most of the friends she’d had in college, but he was more than half a foot taller than she was at least. His height combined with his broad frame made him rather intimidating, but she’d learned a lesson from the last time she’d taken a step back, and she stood her ground. Rey raised the flashlight in her hand, and prepared to strike him with the butt end of it as he got closer, “Please, just let me get past, I’ve got rounds to make. I don’t have time for this.”

“You have time to answer my question. It’s simple. Who are you?”

She looked at him for a moment, not trusting him for a second, but as far as she knew, telling him who she was was the only way she’d be allowed to move on from this confrontation. “I’m Rey, I’m the new night guard.” She pointed to the patch on the side of her blazer, and realization dawned on Kylo Ren as he took a step back.

Kylo was silent for a moment, then he switched off his lightsaber, and he put the damn thing into its proper position on his belt as he looked at her. “What happened to Sebastian?”

She shook her head, “I don’t know, he got fired.” It was true, she didn’t know. She didn’t even know if or how this “Sebastian,” that the stormtroopers, Poe, and now Kylo Ren were talking about got fired. All she knew was that this job position had opened up, and she was now filling the role. “Now would you please let me pass? I’ll use this.” She held the flashlight up pointedly now, “I don’t know how effective it’ll be, but I’ll use it.”

He still didn’t move, he had a stubbornness about him that she was growing fast to dislike, and she knew she was going to make it her mission to avoid the god damned fourth floor as much as she possibly could after this. “You want to hurt me,” he stated plainly after a few seconds of silence.

She scoffed, “That tends to happen when you’re being hunted by a creature in a mask.”

Kylo stopped moving for a moment, considering her before he took a step back, and his hands reached up. A button was pressed, and there was a faint hissing noise as the mouthpiece of his helmet moved, then at long last he removed it.

To say that he was not at all what Rey had been expecting would be an understatement. She’d been expecting an intimidating looking face with maybe some scars or an older man with years of experience showing on his features. She’d expected the sort of man who looked like he spent his days ruthlessly beating people, like he’d been born to kill and intimidate. A man who was bald or had a buzz cut like most men of his sort did,  but when the mask came off she was surprised by a youthful, unconventionally attractive face, and a full head of thick, wavy, and dark hair that barely brushed his shoulders.

She blinked her surprise away as she looked at him, peering into a pair of brown eyes that stared into her like he was seeing her very soul, “Satisfied?” he asked, sarcasm dripping from a voice that was still rather deep, but less menacing than the one that had been distorted by his mask.

A glare was thrown his way as any trace of initial—admittedly somewhat pleasant—shock at his appearance wore off, and the loathing returned, “Very,” she said sarcastically, “Now will you finally move? I don’t have time for this. You’ve only got…” she looked down at her phone, “Thirty eight minutes until the sun rises.”

At long last, Kylo stepped to the side, gesturing for his knights to do the same a second later, clearing the path to the stairs for her. She glared at him one last time, then she moved past him, shoving her shoulder against his as she moved to let him know how ticked off she was. A mere ten feet into her angry march down the corridor, however, Kylo called after her, “If you’re the night guard, I’m assuming they’ve told you that you need to learn how to fight.”

Rey slowed to a stop, and looked over her shoulder at him just after she passed the knights, “Yes, they did. Luke’s going to teach me how to wield a saber tomorrow night.”

Kylo quirked an eyebrow, “Luke, huh?”

“Yes, Luke.”

“The farm boy?”

“He’s a Jedi, not a farm boy.”

“He used to be a farm boy, you’re the night guard, you should know our histories.”

“It’s my first night, and I’m ending this conversation now,” she told him, turning around to resume her angry walk to the stairs, “Don’t plan on speaking to me again.”

Before she could move, however, he called out to her again, “What if I offered to teach you instead?” he asked, and she froze in place, wondering if she’d heard him right. His footsteps sounded behind her, and once again he was in front of her, the malice in his eyes no longer feeling like it was burning into her, “I could show you just as much as he could, if not more.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I am.”

“I can’t trust you,” she said, “I learned all about you today, I know who you are, what you’ve done. Why would I ever train with you?”

A hint of the menace returned to Kylo’s eyes, but he said nothing, looking as though he’d suddenly heard something calling out to him as his head swerved in the opposite direction, looking back down the hallway they’d come down. He sighed, then he turned back to her, “Our time has run out… I’ll see you tomorrow night.” With that, he turned away, and put his helmet back on as he stalked down the halls, the knights following soon after, leaving a stunned Rey standing there as they moved in a rush of black fabric.

“Don’t count on it,” she muttered bitterly once they were out of earshot, then she rushed back towards the stairwell, and worked to finish up her rounds.

No other floor gave her trouble. Everyone else was working to get back into position, and she gave friendly waves to the people she’d spent the night bonding with, wondering how she hadn’t collapsed from exhaustion yet. With fifteen minutes before sunrise, she finished the rounds. The only one out of place was BB-8, who was waiting for her by the elevator, and she gave him a smile and a pat on the head before she summoned it, and they headed back down to the lobby together.

The droid sprang from the elevator and rushed toward its little platform, driving up the ramp with a sort of glee that brought another smile to her face as she sat down in the chair behind the desk. She watched the droid come to a stop, and it beeped politely at her before assuming the position it had been in at the beginning of the night. Once the droid fell silent, Rey realized how truly exhausted she was. She’d risen fairly early that morning and then subsequently stayed up all night. It would be another hour before she was back in her apartment, the commute alone taking up forty five of those minutes once the sun rose.

She looked at her phone’s clock again. It was twenty minutes past six, she had a mere ten minutes before she would finally be able to clock out, and the janitor that cleaned up the museum in the mornings would begin _his_ work. She yawned as she leaned back in the chair, and thought through the night that was undoubtedly the most insane one of her entire life.

That night, she’d witnessed the impossible. A museum had come to life. It was like something out of a science fiction film, or some sort of novel. It was absolutely surreal, and yet it was wonderful. The interactions she’d had with the museum’s inhabitants had made her feel less lonely than she had in months.

She’d had friends, sure, but they’d all gone off to graduate school immediately on their parents’ money. She’d been raised in the foster care system and promptly emancipated herself when she was eighteen. She’d paid for college on scholarships and scholarships alone, racking up a hefty amount of debt as well that she was still paying off. She would have to work for years to afford to continue her education.

And yet all she’d witnessed that night had her questioning everything. She’d had conversations with people she’d never actually meet who had been dead for decades if not centuries, and she’d bonded with them like they were old friends. All they were was ghosts, very lifelike, corporeal ghosts that came out at night to haunt a place they’d never even lived in much less died in.

Suddenly a yellow light filtered into the domed glass ceiling overhead, and Rey looked up to find herself blinded by the sunlight. It was six thirty, her shift was over. Shaking herself from her thoughts, she quickly gathered her things from beneath the desk, relieved that none of the museum’s inhabitants had touched her stuff, and she walked into Larry’s office to clock out. Her first night at the museum had officially come to a close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's mood is setting your fic in Atlanta because the song Havana came on, and well, it references Atlanta. Anyway, so hopefully I'll be able to update this pretty often, but I'm not sure how often that'll be when my estimated chapter lengths will be 10-15k and that can take a hot minute to write, but I've got this all pretty meticulously planned out, so here's hoping. I plan on incorporating the other characters a bit more once I start the second "Act" (Why I'm calling them acts, I don't know, let's assume I'm being pretentious or something) and hopefully it stays as ridiculous and fun as the original Night at the Museum movies. See you guys next time.


	2. Act Two: Nights Two-Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SHIT GUYS IM SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG. I had this chapter planned out but then I realized I hated half of it and rewrote it like five times. On top of that, I was trying to finish my other fic, Prison Break first, and that took longer than expected, and on top of all that my personal life is a mess and I work. Anyway, here's a continuation of this oddball of a fic. Hopefully it won't take me a month to update again, and it shouldn't. There's a lot I've been looking forward to writing.

 

Rey woke up once again to a pounding headache, though this one had nothing to do with a hangover. She groaned as she rolled over in her bed, trying not to think about the weird dream she’d had last night. Staying up all night at the museum must not have done her any favors, and perhaps she’d need to rethink her acceptance of this job. She was turning out to be not as much of a night owl as she’d initially thought. 

She’d dreamt that the entire museum had come to life, that she’d been followed around by a droid, and Luke Skywalker had offered to teach her how to use a lightsaber. She dreamt that Kylo Ren was a ruggedly handsome villain who’d offered her much the same, only in a more sinister manner. Only…

With a gasp, Rey sat boltright up in bed as she realized that none of that had been a dream, it had all been real. Every single, weird second of it. Bonding with Poe Dameron, meeting Leia, Han, Luke… The knights of Ren… All of it was real. Her hand came up to her forehead, checking to see if she’d developed a fever and it was all some sort of fever dream, but no, she came back normal. 

Still breathing hard, Rey collapsed back into her mattress, and stared up at the ceiling as she contemplated what the hell she was going to do next. It wasn’t like she had anyone to tell about her adventures as the museum’s night guard. She didn’t know where she’d start explaining, “Oh, the museum I work at? Yeah the space museum? It comes to life at night! No, I’m not mad, I promise!”

Yeah. People would buy that. 

There was one, lone person she could talk to, and oh, how she planned on giving him an earful. While she actually found herself enjoying the museum’s night life, she was still pissed as hell at Larry for not warning her about what would happen once the sun went down. But what had happened… 

It had been the sort of experience she’d have to describe as magical. Even the darker encounter she’d had with Kylo Ren had its own wonderful air of mystery and magic to it. Every moment she spent inside the museum, at least once the sun went down had been the most intriguing of her entire life. In all twenty three of her years so far, she hadn’t experienced anything that had made her feel the way the museum had that night. Her life had truly started when Poe Dameron had grabbed her hand and led her away from storm troopers. No, when that little droid—BB-8, she remembered— had woken up. That’s when everything truly started. That was the first time in a long time that she’d really felt  _ alive.  _

With a sigh, she turned over in her bed, and looked at the time on her phone. It was half past noon. She’d slept for a meager five hours, not quite enough time to get any significant sleep for her job, but she had to be back at work in just over five hours. It was January, and the sun tended to set frighteningly early in the first month of the year. 

Another groan left her lips as she threw back the covers, and got up out of bed. She intended to spend at least two of those hours before her shift started grilling Larry about the museum, and possibly demanding a raise, but not before she showered thoroughly. 

Ten minutes later, Rey emerged from the shower with a towel wrapped around her body as she approached the chair she’d slung her uniform over the night before. She took a few deep breaths as she stared at it, the logo of the museum seeming to stare back the longer it went on. 

Eventually, she turned away, and picked out some day clothes for herself, putting them on before she walked out into her kitchen and made herself breakfast. It was going to be a long day, and an even longer night. 

She had a decent amount of time before she was due to show up at the museum, time that she spent researching everything about it on an aging laptop. She researched the crash, the mysterious tablet, the Skywalkers, Poe, Kylo, and everything and everyone else she could think of. By the end of her research, she felt like she understood their stories a bit more, but she was certain there was still a good portion missing. 

What the hell had happened in that final year before the Falcon’s journey? There wasn’t a single piece of data beyond the year mark prior to the ship’s leaving its home galaxy, and whoever the pilot was had been killed before getting the chance to explain it. There was still so much mystery despite everything they knew about that galaxy being displayed openly in the museum, and she was determined to crack it. After she finished yelling at Larry for not warning her, that is.

Three hours later, Rey changed into her uniform, and prepared herself mentally for what the hell she was going to say to her manager. How exactly did one broach the topic of, “why the fuck didn’t you tell me the museum comes to life at night” politely? She thought it over thoroughly on her walk back to the museum, rehearsing with herself how her first confrontation with Larry would play out--sometimes out loud, much to the surprise of the people walking around her. 

Her stress level seemed to only be rising the closer she got to the museum, and by the time she stood at the base of its steps, she was certain her resting heart rate registered as a heart attack. It took another five minutes to summon the courage to finally venture up the steps, and into the museum itself. Whatever happened when she finally stepped into Larry’s office wouldn’t be  _ that bad,  _ she convinced herself. 

At long last she walked through the doors of the museum, surprising a few patrons and the receptionist at the desk—the same kindly looking woman from the day before whose name she fully intended on learning—as she stormed straight toward Larry’s office. Perhaps under ordinary circumstances it would be a bad idea to yell at her boss on her second day of work, but she felt like somehow this would be a good exception to that rule. After all, this was no ordinary job she’d decided to take. The museum fucking came to life. 

Rey didn’t even knock before she threw the door open, not even looking to see it squeak shut behind her as she stared down the man sitting behind the desk. When she found him, her manager was eating noodles from a plastic Tupperware container, and he had half of a string of spaghetti hanging out of his mouth when he froze from the shock of her abrupt entrance. 

“Rey!” He cried, quickly swallowing the food in his mouth, “What are you doing here so early?”

She scoffed, “Don’t play dumb with me, you know exactly why I’m here,” she replied, gripping the edge of his desk as she bent over it. She could only hope she looked at least twice as intense as she felt staring him down. 

Larry nodded, conceding the argument before it even truly began as he stood from his desk, rising to his full height—well, with his age he was hunched over slightly, but he still stood a good few inches over Rey— before he walked around to the side of it, and leaned against it. He crossed his arms as he began to speak, “I assume they told you everything.”

“Not everything, but they told me enough. Apparently you’ve done this to all the others.”

“That would be correct.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

“You never would’ve believed me, Rey.”

She couldn’t even form a counter argument. He was right. She definitely wouldn’t have believed him. The woman she was twenty four hours prior thought the most magical thing in the world was the microwave or the toaster. It had taken that one night in the museum to show her there were infinite impossible things out there in the universe, and if it weren’t for that, she wouldn’t believe him when he told her that the museum came to life at night. 

“You’re right.” She slumped down into a nearby chair, and began to rub her temples as the stress she’d had going into the conversation slowly left her. “How do I do this, then?”

“What do you mean?”

She glared at him, “How do I take care of a museum that comes to life?”

Larry sighed, “All I can tell you is to never let your guard down, not around any of them, not even for a second. Never leave them alone. And never. Ever. Ever ever ever. Let Snoke have the tablet. Understand?”   


She gave him a firm nod, “That’s what they were telling me,” she said, then her brows furrowed in confusion, “But none of them seemed to know why?”

Her manager’s face suddenly fell, and she suspected that he did indeed know. In the same second she realized that he knew precisely what Snoke intended with the tablet, she realized he was never planning to tell her just what that was. 

Instead of answering her question, Larry cleared his throat, and motioned for the door, “It may be wise to see them again in the light of day, memorize the names and the faces, especially of the ones you didn’t talk to.”

“You’re changing the subject,” she replied, “Why?”

“I’ve known them a lot longer than you have,” he said, moving to sit behind his desk once more, “The fewer people who know about Snoke’s plan the better, especially in case this doesn’t work out.”

There was an almost vague threat behind his words, almost a “shut up or get fired,” but Larry was too old and too kind a man to actually make the threat openly. He almost looked scared as he spoke to her, and she wondered just what he knew about this museum that had him so afraid. It stood to reason that he’d been there longer than most. In her research that morning, she discovered that he’d been there since not long after the museum’s opening, joining on as its manager in 1981 and staying ever since. 

Rey nodded to him slowly, then she sighed, “I’ll do that, then. I’ll look around.” With that, she turned, opened the door, and walked out of his office to explore the rest of her museum. She walked out of the front area, passing the little droid she’d bonded with on her first night, and headed straight down the halls to look upon the now wax faces of the people she would spend her every night guarding.

A long while passed as she traversed the hallways, walking down the second floor hallways and passing Anakin Skywalker and a youthful Obi Wan Kenobi, then passing scenery depicting order sixty six, a figure of Darth Vader—though this one was strapped to a table behind glass in an image depicting his initial rise— Padme Amidala, and the Rogue One crew. She observed them carefully, since they’d been the people she hadn’t spent much time with yet.

She spent another chunk of her time observing the people she  _ had _ spent time with, walking past the displays of Poe and Leia, and the display of Han that Larry had called scruffy looking. The older version of Han did indeed look worn down, but not to the point where she couldn’t see the yearning for adventure in his eyes. There was something hopeful about him despite all she knew of his story and what he’d been through. At some point that second night, she intended to ask him about himself, learn everything she could before she had to go off to attend her lessons with Luke. 

The aforementioned Skywalker wasn’t displayed in his old age, all that was known about him was that he was missing somewhere, and as of the last data point available on the Falcon, he hadn’t been found. She wondered then, reading the plaque beneath a map of the galaxy about his disappearance, if he had been the one to pilot the Falcon to the Earth. If perhaps that was why there wasn’t anything known about him after Ben Solo had become Kylo Ren. 

She moved on from the display, and headed up to the fourth floor, finding herself amongst a display of Vader and stormtroopers, amongst the original evils of the story she’d been told—the sole exception was the figure of Emperor Palpatine, whom she knew to reside on the fifth floor from Larry’s discussions the day before. Eventually though, she came upon the figure of Kylo Ren, a scowl coming across her features almost immediately as she looked upon him, remembering his cocky attitude during their encounter the previous night.

Rey peered up at his masked figure curiously, then she looked up and down the corridor to make sure she was alone, and she stepped up into his enclosure. She made sure to get up into his face as she raised her right pointer finger to him, “I don’t know what you’re planning, but I know it’s not good.”

The wax figure of Kylo Ren said nothing in return, though somehow she felt like his eyes were still on her behind that mask. She crossed her arms, and glared up at him, “I’m not going to say yes,” she promised, “I will never say yes, I swear. You can try all you want, you won’t ever get anything from me.”

With the figure not capable of saying a damn word until the sun went down, Rey sighed in frustration, “But why did you make that offer? That’s the one part I can’t understand. I...” She began to pace in circles around him, standing between him and one of the other knights as she walked beside him, “What do you want from me?”

Rationally, she knew these were all questions she should be asking him when the sun went down, but irrationally, she remembered that she’d promised him she wouldn’t be talking to him again any time soon. His attitude, his confidence that she would want to join him had irritated her in ways she hadn’t known she could be irritated, but still a part of her was intrigued by him all the same. There was something about him, and the way he’d spoken to her that made her think there was more to him than met the eye. Beneath that mask, there was someone human—well, as human as he could be considering he was wax—someone who wasn’t the notorious villain that was Kylo Ren. 

“Who the hell are you?” she asked him.

A voice seemed quick to answer, “Rey, what the hell are you doing?”

She thought she may have jumped ten feet into the air as she turned around to find Larry staring up at her with his arms crossed. A blush rose to her cheeks as she quickly stepped away from the enclosure, “I’m sorry, sir, I was… I was just giving him a piece of my mind.”

A curious eyebrow was quirked at her, “Did he give you trouble last night?”

She scoffed, “He offered to teach me how to fight. I rejected him, and told him I’d never speak to him again, I was just making sure he knew.” Once again, she glared pointedly at Kylo, determined not to give his awakened self an ounce of her attention that night. 

Larry chuckled lightly, “Sounds like something he would do.”

“You know him then?”

Her boss scratched his head, “I know all of them, Rey,” he replied, “Now get down from there before someone who isn’t me sees you.”

Rey nodded, and immediately stepped away from Kylo, and out of his enclosure, “You’re not mad?”

“You’re doing what I told you to do. No, I’m not mad. But… There’s more to this one than meets the eye.”

“What do you mean?”

Larry looked up at the figure of Kylo Ren for a moment, contemplating something before he shrugged, “You know his story,” he said, reading the plaque placed at the base of Kylo’s display, “Before he was Kylo Ren, he was Ben Solo. He switched sides about six years before the data from the Falcon stops… and like most of the others, no one knows how his story ends…” He looked up at him for another moment, then he sighed, “Anyways, carry on, you’ve got another hour until your shift starts, I shouldn’t waste your time.”

She was about to protest that he wasn’t wasting her time, and she wanted to know more about what he was saying, but he was already walking away from her, making it clear that their conversation was over. With a sigh, she too walked away a minute later, and began walking down the hallway leading to the staircase. 

Before she knew it, she sat at the base of the staircase leading to the fifth floor, the one floor she hadn’t been shown by Larry on their tour. He’d claimed they’d run out of time, but she had a weird feeling there was something else he wasn’t telling her. 

As she walked up the ominous staircase, she observed the first order symbols lining the walls. Images of stormtroopers and various generals were depicted in portraits in the hall as she reached the top of the stairs, and turned walking past it until she reached a large room depicting Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine. Their figures looked menacing as they towered over her in their enclosure, and as an uncomfortable feeling settled in her stomach, she looked away. 

Rey headed further down the hall until she reached two black doors that were windowless. A weird, troubling feeling settled over her as she pulled them open, and walked in to find a giant, almost cavernous room that was covered in red curtains. 

At the far end of it was a throne, and atop that throne sat a sinister looking humanoid figure in a golden robe. He was roped off from the rest of the room by a red velvet piping, but guarded further by men in red costumes of some sort, their spears of the same color pointed in her direction threateningly. 

Yet despite all the other distractions offered by the room, it was the figure centered in the throne at the far end that captivated her the most. She felt the same way as she had in front of the tablet the night before, like she was drawn to the figure and needed to be pulled back. 

The figure almost appeared to be staring directly into her soul even though as of that moment, he was completely wax. It was impossible for him to be looking at her and yet as she approached him the feeling only grew worse. She found herself almost becoming nauseous as she looked at him, but by the time she reached that velvet rope she was hypnotized. She nearly fell over it as she made her impact with it, and that was the only thing snapping her from her trance. 

Rey’s breath hitched slightly as she came out of her hypnotic state, and she finally saw the beady, frightening eyes of the supreme leader up close. There was no doubt in her mind who this was. This was the man she’d been warned about so many times. She didn’t need to read his plaque to know that he was undoubtedly Snoke. 

He looked a mixture of menacing and ridiculous in Rey’s eyes, but there was only so much intimidation one could accomplish in a glorified bathrobe. 

Still, unlike Kylo, where she’d only had too much she wanted to yell at him about, she found herself unknowing of what the hell to say to the creature sitting before her. After a few more agonizingly slow moments, she shook her head and backed away from Snoke’s figure, running out of the room with more speed than she cared to admit. 

The rest of her time spent before her second night was with the various other figures she hadn’t gotten the chance to talk with much on the first. 

She found The elder Han Solo positioned next to Leia in their third floor enclosure, though there was a striking distance between them that had her intrigued. The Han and Leia she’d met the night before had been… not a picture perfect happy couple, but in love nonetheless. Their figures were draped over each other as they gazed into each other’s eyes by day. 

The plaque at the base of the enclosure told their story, how they’d been unified until their son’s turn to the dark side split them up for good. They’d apparently rarely seen each other after that, only encountering one another on the rare occurrence they met during a battle. Like everyone else, though, their story’s end was unknown. Lost in the crash of the Falcon forty one years prior. 

She looked up into the now glassy eyes of the powerful, regal general from the night before and felt a twinge of sorrow for the woman who had lost her son. A sense of anger grew in the back of her mind at Kylo for what he’d done to hurt her, to cause the almost constant frown lines adorning Leia’s features. If he ever tried to talk to her again, she’d give him hell. 

Poe Dameron caught her eye next, and though she’d seen him in his wax state the day before, she hadn’t really noticed him then. Now it felt odd to look upon his frozen form. He’d been one of the most lively of the museum’s inhabitants on her first night, and to see him so still and lifeless after all that felt off putting. 

Rey reached up a hand and placed it on his arm, patting it briefly before she moved on, wandering back down the hall until she was standing in front of the door leading to the tablet that was causing all of this. She peered at it curiously, wondering who the stormtrooper that guarded it was. He had a story unlike the others, he had his own history, but his had been created here in the museum, not in that galaxy that was so far away. 

The door was once again locked, as it had been the last time she’d approached it with Poe, and she knew she didn’t need to see it twice, but she remembered the way it had beckoned her. She’d never felt anything like the pull she felt to it and to Snoke. She couldn’t explain it. It was quite literally beyond her world. 

The museum could only tell her so much about what went down before the Falcon had made its fatal descent to Earth, and she hoped one day she’d learn it. 

She walked away from the entryway to the tablet hall, and headed back down the hall toward the lobby. It was now half past four, and in the winter, the sun would be setting very soon. 

Rey spent the remainder of time before her shift getting fast food and contemplating what Luke had promised he’d teach her that night. She returned to the museum twenty minutes before the sun was due to set, just as the last of the museum’s attendees was walking out the door. 

She found Larry shutting off the access to the fifth floor on the elevator in the lobby, and he gave her a brief nod and smiled at her as he came out. The elderly man ran a hand through graying, dark hair, and walked down the hallway where the miniatures were stored to the second elevator as she headed into his office to clock in. 

Five minutes later they met again in the lobby, and Rey was already waiting behind the front desk for the droid sitting before her to wake up. Hopefully this time he wouldn’t frighten her. She was prepared for it now. She was certain. 

“Did you see what you needed to see?” Larry asked her, his voice hopeful as he leaned against the desk. 

She gave him a nod, “I did,” she replied, then she frowned, recalling the encounter she’d had with Snoke, “But, sir… I went to the fifth floor…”

Larry tensed visibly, looking for all the world like she’d just mentioned something forbidden, classified, and intended to be closed off from conversation for good. But he said nothing as a look washed over his aged features, and his dark eyes blinked behind his glasses. She was only made more curious about him. Just like the rest of the museum, its manager was a complete mystery. He hid his own secrets just as everyone made from wax did, but she wondered what his had to do with the galaxy far far away. 

“Sir, it was like I was pulled by a magnet, it was the same thing I felt near the tablet, I was just wondering what that—“

“Don’t go near Snoke again,” Larry warned her, his voice serious, but soft as his eyes locked onto hers. 

“Have you ever met him?” 

Larry hesitated before answering, “Yes, I have. I’ve spent many nights as this museum’s night guard, mostly in my youth. But we haven’t always been able to find a replacement for night guards as quickly as we’ve found you.

“Snoke has a plan for this museum, and…” he paused, and whether he was searching for a memory or conjuring up a lie she couldn’t tell. Those two expressions looked the same in a lot of people, and Larry was one of them. “There are a multitude of theories, but the one that is most likely links him with the tablet, and puts him as being responsible for its existence.”

“But why?”

“Some think it’s so he could have a mobile conduit for the force, so that he could take that tablet and bring it where its presence wasn’t so strong… so that he could infiltrate other places with it and take them over just as he did his home galaxy.”

By the time he finished speaking, Rey’s eyes were threatening to poke out of her skull, and the final rays of sunlight were shining down on her face, “Wow…”

“Anyway, it's just a theory,” Larry said, backtracking from the trance he’d gotten himself into while talking, and he checked his watch, “And it’s nearly sunset, I should bid you goodnight.”

“Yeah, of course.” Rey wanted nothing more than to try and get him to elaborate, but she knew he wouldn’t tell her a damn thing. He’d made it clear with the good night that he was ending their conversation, and she would have time to figure it out later. 

With that, Larry gave her a wave, and shrugged on a black coat before he headed for the door. Rey was on his heels to lock the doors behind him, watching as his tall, but hunched over form stalked away into the disappearing sunlight. She scratched her head as she stared puzzled after the old man, but as night began to fall, she tried to think little of it. 

She began eagerly counting down the minutes until the tablet would bring everything to life, watching as the little second hand spun its way around the clock on her phone until at last the final ray of sunlight disappeared beneath the buildings and the trees.

This time, she caught BB-8 as he chirped to life, and rolled off his ramp until he sat behind the desk with her, waiting patiently for his scratches. She gave them to him willingly, a far cry from last night’s scream greeting when she hadn’t known that the little droid would awaken. 

Above, she could hear the sound of stormtroopers’ blaster fire, and she simply rolled her eyes this time. It was amazing how quickly the museum’s insanity was becoming her new normal. 

Together, she and BB-8 walked into the elevator, riding it to the third floor to find Poe, and hopefully the promised lessons from Luke. 

Poe’s face lit up when he saw her, arms wrapping her into a tight—but not unwelcome— hug. She was quick to return the embrace, though it was short lived as Poe pulled away, “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

His hand found hers, and before she knew it, Poe was leading her down the hallway to where Leia stood talking to a man whose back was turned to her, but whose posture was unmistakable. 

She’d met his younger self the night before, but there was something about the older version of Han Solo that held that much more intrigue. Larry’s voice saying, “he’s a bit more scruffy looking than he used to be,” came into her head then. It was indeed an accurate description of the grey haired man standing before her, almost reminding her of her manager himself. 

“Han!” Poe called out, and the older man turned around with his eyebrows raised and his arms crossed. 

When he was no longer wax, the exhaustion she could see on the older Han was much more prevalent. She could see the lines on his face more clearly in his more lifelike form, could see what the years had done to him. His worn down appearance was understandable given what she knew he’d gone through. All that loss—all that pain—that left scars on a person in ways beyond what physical scars could do. 

“This the new night guard?” Han asked, snapping her out of her thoughts.

“I’m Rey,” she answered him with a nod.

“How the hell did you end up with this job, kid?”

Leia’s hand found his arm then, “Don’t scare her off, Han, it’s only her second night.”

Han raised his palms in the air in a gesture of surrender, “I’m not!” he protested, “I’m just saying, it’s a lot…”

Understatement. But she didn’t protest as she answered plainly, “I saw an ad for it, and I… I needed a job, so I took this one.”

“And as usual, Larry didn’t tell her what the job entailed before he signed her on,” Poe explained.

Han laughed this time, his exhausted expression making way for light humor as he leaned back slightly, “That would take the fun out of it, wouldn’t it?” Rey smiled back at him, then he sighed, “Sorry I missed you last night, k— Rey— I was… occupied.”

She shook her head, “It’s fine, I was too,” she replied, “But I did have a lot I wanted to talk to you about.” She looked at Leia, “Both of you.”

“What about?” Leia asked curiously. 

“I’ll take this as my cue to leave,” Poe said, then he patted Rey’s shoulder, “I’ll see you.”

She waved as he left, then her attention was back on Leia and Han, “It’s about your son,” she said, “He… offered to teach me last night… Teach me how to use the lightsabers, that is.”

Han and Leia’s faces both fell into fast frowns as their eyes met from the corners, “He’s done that before,” the former of the two said, almost to himself, “He’s made the offer to every single night guard, including Larry when he first took on the job.”

Leia nodded in agreement, “You can never say yes,” she warned her, “If you do the museum will fall, and everything we’ve worked to protect for thirty eight years will be lost.”

“What does he want?” Rey crossed her arms and leaned against a nearby wall.

“We’re not sure,” Han replied, “All we know is that Snoke wants the tablet, and we know Snoke never wants anything good. We put two and two together and figured whatever it was probably shouldn’t be allowed to happen, ever. And he’s got our son working for him. He communicates to all the non-fifth-floor personnel of the first order in some sort of broadcast every night, tells them—tells  _ him _ what to do. He must’ve told him to go after you last night”

Rey thought on this for a moment, “That’s not what it seemed like, no, he was surprised to see me. He didn’t know who I was. He wouldn’t let me leave our conversation until I told him who I was.”

“He has her stubbornness,” Han remarked, earning a smack to his arm from Leia. 

“He looks like you, though,” she said, “You have the same smirk.”

She quickly got the sense that what she’d told them had struck a nerve. Leia’s palm clutched her chest, and Han’s breath seemed to catch in his throat. The two resistance fighters exchanged another nervous glance at each other, then the former of the two cleared her throat, “He took off the mask?”

“Yeah, he took it off, he was…” She figured it would probably be a good idea not to mention the reaction she’d had when she first saw his face. His parents didn’t need to know she’d even felt a glimmer of attraction towards their seemingly evil son. “I called him a creature in a mask, and he just… took it off.”

There was another pause, then Leia glanced back at Han again, “He’s never done that. Not in nearly forty years.”

“The only reason we know what he looks like is because it’s in the data,” Han explained to Rey, “Pictures from when he was Ben.”

Rey scoffed, “Lucky me, I must be special,” she said somewhat sarcastically.

“Must be, you made more progress with my son than I’ve made in damn near forty years,” Han grumbled.

“That’s all the progress I’ll  _ be _ making, I promised him he wouldn’t be seeing me again.”

Han smirked, the same smirk that Kylo had given her the night before, “I wouldn’t count on keeping that promise. Like I said, he’s stubborn.”

Rey chuckled lightly, “I’ll do my best,” she said, then she remembered something, and she frowned, “Shit, I promised Luke I’d train with him tonight, I’d better get going.”

“We’ll still be here when you’re done,” Han promised, a glimmer of a smile hiding in his and Leia’s eyes as she told them goodbye, and walked down the hall to the elevator. She had a lesson to attend. 

She didn’t run into Kylo Ren for the next three nights after that. Everything was as smooth of sailing as it could possibly be.

Each night, she went to the museum, talked with Larry until he left for the evening—his exits were always so abrupt, as if he were running from the museum’s night life—and waited until the sun went down so she could attend her lessons with Luke. 

For the next three nights, she would head into the museum, complete the tasks on her instruction manual, chat with Poe, and maybe Han and Leia, then she would head down to the second floor to be taught how to fight by Luke. The former farm boy proved an excellent teacher, something she pointed out to him in the midst of a practice duel she’d engaged with the pole he favored. 

Luke had thanked her, then they’d moved on to another lesson, and she sparred him for the first time on her fourth night as the museum’s night guard. By the night she encountered Kylo for the second time, she felt like she could take on the world. She’d proved herself to be a natural with the lightsaber, though perhaps that was because it wasn’t a real lightsaber. There was only one way to find out, and it was impossible.

Whenever she finished her lessons she would wind up in the company of Poe and the Resistance, or occasionally she’d spend time with the Rogue One crew. Their company made her feel less lonely than she had in years. It had been ages since she’d had friends, and though her new ones were made of wax, she wasn’t complaining. 

She ran into Kylo again on her fifth night at the museum. She’d just finished her lessons with Luke, and had gone up the stairs again to convene with Poe. They’d started up a conversation about the tablet, and from there, everything had gone downhill. 

“I want to see it again,” she told him, “But I don’t want to go alone, I need you to hold me back in case I…” she recalled vividly the reaction she’d had the last time she’d encountered the golden tablet, the same one she’d had when she encountered Snoke. 

“There’s a guard in there, Rey, you don’t need me,” he replied, then a flirtatious grin settled on his features, “You just want an excuse to spend time with my pretty face.”

She scoffed, “You wish, Poe.” But her face was lit up in a smile that hadn’t graced it prior to her arrival at the museum. 

“But sure, I’ll go with you, unspoken attraction or not.”

“Poe!”

The commander simply chuckled as he directed her down the hallway, the two falling into an easy conversation—as if they’d been friends for years instead of mere days—as they approached the tablet’s hall. 

Rey reached into her pocket for her keys, inserting them wordlessly into the lock before she pushed the doors open. The stormtrooper guarding the tablet flinched from shock, but quickly relaxed upon seeing her and Poe. It would seem that despite fifteen years of guarding the tablet, he’d never grown tired of it. His endurance would never cease to amaze her, or perhaps he truly felt  _ that _ guilty over his actions with the first order. 

She gave him a wave as she pressed into the room, but said nothing as her eyes once again landed on the golden tablet, and she felt that familiar pull. Once again she was at the end of the room before she was even aware she was walking, wondering how the tablet had such a pull on her, how such a thing was possible. A part of her remembered Larry’s theory on its origins, that it was a tablet of Snoke’s design. It would make sense, given the sense of fear it seemed to instill in everyone else. 

“Don’t let Snoke near the tablet,” everyone kept saying. The thought made her even more curious as to just what had happened in the final year before the Falcon’s crash. 

“What are you thinking about?” Poe asked, and out of the corner of the eye, she saw him walk up beside her, staring inquisitively at her face. 

“Snoke wants this tablet, but no one seems to know why.” She crossed her arms over her chest as she looked out over the velvet ropes, and felt both Poe’s and the stormtrooper’s eyes on her. “But Larry… Something tells me he does.”

Poe mimicked her gesture, and sighed, “He’s a quiet guy, lot of secrets, but that’s how he’s always been. That’s how most of the night guards are, that’s how you’re going to have to be. No one can know what you’re doing.”

“There’s no one. I don’t have anyone to tell about any of this. I’m…” she paused, shuffling her feet awkwardly on the ground, “I’m alone.”

An awkward silence settled between the two of them, then Rey shook her head, “Anyway, I’ve seen enough for now… I don’t know why I came in here, I thought…”

“You thought it would give you answers?” Poe asked, his sincere tone showing none of the flirtatious lilts from their banter a minute prior.

She nodded as she turned away from the tablet, and pulled out her phone. They had an hour before sunrise, and that meant she needed to spend the rest of her time locking up and preparing the museum for the day. “Come on, the night’s almost over,” she said, moving back down the hall. 

Poe was quick to follow, and together they walked back out of the hall, giving the lone stormtrooper a nod as they made their exit. Rey locked the doors behind them, and then led the commander back to his place on the third floor hall. As Poe prepared to wait in his place, he turned to Rey, “Are you alright?”

“I’ll be fine,” she told him, “I’ll see you tonight?”

“You bet.”

They exchanged a series of grins before Rey embraced her new friend, and made her way around the museum to close up for the day.

Closing up went as normally as ever. Everything was fine on the first three floors, and when she went up to the fourth to lock up the fifth floor, it seemed that her good fortune was continuing. Just like the three nights before, it seemed she wouldn’t be running into Kylo on this night either. Unfortunately, her luck had a funny way of running out. 

As she was making sure the doors to the fifth floor were still firmly locked, there was a loud shout down the hall, and Rey openly flinched from fright as a rather unfortunate storm trooper fell to the ground unconscious before her. She turned to run just as a red light illuminated the corridor, and Kylo Ren walked in with his lightsaber turned on, and pointed directly at her. This time, she noticed his knights weren’t with him. 

“So much for not running into me,” Kylo remarked, sarcasm dripping into his distorted voice. 

She glared at him, “Where are your knights?” She asked, “Don’t you go everywhere with them?”

“I’m doing this alone, we don’t have much time, and bringing more people would be a waste.”

“And what are you doing?”

He didn’t answer her, he didn’t need to. It was obvious in the way his head tilted to look past her, down the hallway. He was seeing past the stairs, the resistance, and all the other displays right down to the hallway housing the tablet. “Move out of the way, and no one else gets hurt,” Kylo warned them, his lightsaber level with her eyes. 

She felt her heart skip a beat in her chest, knowing that the only thing that stood between him and the tablet was herself and the stormtrooper guarding it. She wasn’t the most experienced fighter, and she didn’t have a weapon on hand. The nearest display of lightsabers was located just down the hall close to where the stairs to the third floor were located. If she could manage to get him there…

“You’ll have to go through me, first,” she told him, hoping she sounded more threatening than she felt. 

Kylo’s face was unreadable behind his damned helmet, but she had no doubt he was surprised by the way he shifted backwards. The shift was so slight that if she hadn’t been watching him, she would’ve missed it. But she had been watching him, and she knew she had his attention. “You have no weapon.”

“Neither do you,” she pointed out, walking toward him slowly, “You’re just a man in a mask making threats.”

“Get out of the way, I’m not ending this night without the tablet.”

“Guess you won’t be ending the night, then,” Rey replied, advancing toward him further. As she stared up into that obsidian helm, all her questions about him blossomed back into her brain. She wondered just why he’d offered to train her, why he’d done the things he’d done, who he was in the first place. She had some idea of the man he’d been, but… She couldn’t place what was so odd about him in particular. 

Kylo must’ve been smirking his father’s infamous smirk behind that mask, as she’d already known him to do, “What do you plan to do to stop me?” he asked. 

“I want to know why you want to train me. Why you made your offer the other night.”

“Ah, that…” he said, that damned voice modulator beginning to irritate the shit out of her. 

“Can you take that damned thing off? Look me in the eyes when I’m talking to you.”

He looked at her for a moment, considering it, then he sighed, shut off his saber, and at long last, clicked something, and the helm came off so she was once again looking upon his face. “Better?”

She scoffed, “It’d only be better if you went back to your place, and left the tablet alone.”

Kylo smirked, “You really think it’ll be that easy?”

“I know it won’t.” She crossed her arms over her chest, and gestured to his lightsaber, “But we could at least make it a fair fight.”

Kylo looked at her in disbelief, “You’ve only had four lessons, this is a fight you’re going to lose.”

She held her chin up high as she took her final steps towards him, placing her about five feet away from where he stood. “You want to bet?” It was a wonder that he hadn’t knocked her down already and made for the damned tablet. She could only hope her distraction would hold for longer. 

“I don’t need to bet, I already know,” he said, “If you’d been training with me, you might stand a better chance.”

“Are you seriously making the offer again?”

“Why? Are you going to say yes?”

“Why do you want me to?”

Kylo considered this, and nodded as he looked down on her, “In all the years this museum has been running, the First Order has never had a nightguard on our side,” he explained, eyes drifting behind Rey to the far end of the hall, “If you’re working with us, we can finally get the tablet, finish what we started in our home galaxy.”

It sounded mad, every word of it, but she wasn’t even certain just what they had started in their home galaxy. What the hell was he trying to get her to do? She could only wonder as they began to walk down the hall, and she started to lead him down toward the lightsaber rack. “Why would I help you do that?”

“Because if Snoke has the tablet, we can bring the force to this galaxy in full, have access to our powers again.”

“And why would I help you and Snoke become more powerful? I’ve seen what you’ve done. I know what you’re both capable of. The dark side is no force for good.”

Kylo quirked an eyebrow at her, “It’s not just us, Night guard, it’s everyone, and since you’re so set on what it can do for good, you know what the force does, what it’s capable of. I know they’ve told you.”

They did tell her. They told her the good things and the bad things the force was capable of doing--or rather, what one was capable of when wielding it. But she still didn’t see how Kylo Ren’s idea would end up benefiting anyone who wasn’t from the first order, or how it would benefit anyone when they were trapped within the walls of the museum. “How is that going to help you if you’re trapped in the museum?”

“In Snoke’s communications, he says he’s certain that won’t be a problem.”

“And you just trust him with a promise that vague?”

Kylo paused for a moment, his eyes staring blankly ahead as if he weren’t truly in that room, but instead somewhere else lost in a memory—or more accurately, what was trapped in his head as a result of the Falcon’s missing data—as they stopped walking a mere ten feet from the lightsaber display. “I don’t have anyone else to trust.” His statement reminded her of what she’d told Poe a moment earlier about how she was alone. She didn’t have anyone else to trust either. 

It was then that she remembered the reason why he’d abandoned being Ben Solo, and gone to become Kylo Ren. It had been Luke Skywalker’s grave mistake that had put him in the position he was in as of the last shred of data from the Falcon, according to the data. “That doesn’t mean you should trust him.” 

He’d definitely heard her, but it would seem that he had elected to ignore her statement as he pressed on down the hallway, “Have you changed your mind?”

All Rey was certain of was that they’d started was a war, and she knew that they were sure as hell not bringing another galaxy’s war to her own. The Earth had enough problems as it was. She shook her head as they approached the lightsaber rack, and reached out for one, hoping she was good enough with it to at least hold him off for the remaining thirty minutes or so they had left before sunrise, “No,” she replied as she switched it on, the blade a crisp blue as it lit up their surroundings. 

His own red blade was ignited shortly after, and she cried out as she charged him in an overhead strike that he was quick to block. “You really think you can hold your own against me?”

“We’re going to find out.”

She had thirty minutes until the sun rose, and about ten until he would hear the mental call to return to his post. She’d done alright in her lessons with Luke, But actually dueling someone would be a whole other story. 

Kylo broke out of the blade lock, and instantly came at her again. She fell to the defensive, blocking out his attacks as best she could. Fighting him was vastly different than the kind, almost playful practice runs she’d had with the Jedi. It felt like she were fighting a hurricane as he spun about and whirled her further down the hall, advancing them back to the stairs. At some point, she was vaguely aware that he had dropped his helm, the metal frame clanking loudly against the tile floors of the hall, but she couldn’t dwell on it as she poured her focus into maintaining the fight.

“Still think you can hold your own?” His voice was sarcastic and condescending as his eyes met hers, their duel still only just getting started. 

She didn’t answer him, she simply kicked forward, her foot planting itself firmly in his gut before her momentum sent him flying backwards. This time, it was Rey who advanced on him, swinging her projected blade with a ferocity she didn’t know she had. 

Kylo almost looked impressed as he blocked her attacks, but she couldn’t pay too close attention to his expression as she focused on holding the battle out for just a few moments longer. “You’re holding your own well for an amateur,” he told her, regaining the upper hand with a rapid slash that narrowly missed her gut, “Your stances are a bit weak.”

“Are you seriously giving me help?”

“I’m hoping you’ll change your mind.”

“No chance,” she replied as she backed him toward a wall, but all he did as his back made contact with it was smirk at her in a manner she could almost consider suggestive. Only Han Solo’s son would consider any manner of flirting in a fight. 

The smirk had her unfortunately compromised for the tiniest half second, and he pushed her away from him as he moved away from the wall, coming at her again in another overhead strike. She quickly blocked it, and swung herself beneath their locked blades so she was behind him, unlocking them as soon as she came up. 

Kylo was quick to turn on her again, “You might as well give up now,” he said, slashing across from right to left in a strike she was quick to block, “I’m going to get that tablet.”

“Not before the sun rises,  you’re not.” She was quick to strike back at him, her revelation about how much time they had left proving to be an effective tool as she brought her lightsaber in an upward slash that would’ve split his face open had the blade been real. 

He fell to the ground gracelessly, and stared up at her as his saber clattered beside him, shutting itself off as it hit the floor. She began to advance on him further, but he put his hands up in what would seem to be a surrender, then the alarm went off on her phone, and she realized why he was forfeiting the fight. He was out of time. 

She smirked at him as he rose from the ground. She’d done it. She had beaten the supposedly legendary Kylo Ren, though she supposed his lack of true force powers had helped her case.

A scowl was thrown in her direction as he rose to his full height, glaring at her as he reached for the helm he’d dropped in the fight, but before he put it on, his expression softened, “You’re better than I thought you’d be.”

“And you’re not as good as  _ I’d  _ thought you’d be.”

Kylos features shifted into a familiar smirk, one so much like Han’s as he put the helmet back on, and as it hissed into place, he sighed, “You got lucky, we’ll have to try again.”

“I told you I didn’t want to see you again, tonight was an unfortunate exception,” she reminded him, crossing her arms as he began to back away down the hall. 

“They want you to turn me back to the light, you’ll have to see me if you want to do that.” 

“No they don’t, they would’ve said-”

“That’s what they want from all of them, Rey, I would know. They’ve been trying for thirty eight years.” His voice was almost sad, even the distortion from his helmet couldn’t cover it up. With that, Kylo spared her one last glance, and threw his hood up over his mask before he treaded cautiously back down the hall toward his display, leaving Rey still a little breathless from their fight as she stared after him. 

She took her phone out of her pocket. Fifteen minutes remained until the sun was set to rise on the museum. There were fifteen more minutes to finish up all her nightly duties, which she had intended to finish an hour ago before Kylo had distracted her.  She groaned as she began rushing down all the hallways, making sure everything was closed off as it was supposed to be, and everyone was in their places before she hurried back to the front desk, arriving just as the first of the sun’s rays penetrated the museum’s windows. 

Rey looked up at the pink tinted sky, blinking into the sunlight as it shone down on her face. She felt once again like she’d had an insanely lucid dream, but that was the way she always felt after one of her shifts. She’d gotten sloppy this last one; had let Kylo distract her when she should’ve ignored him. She shouldn’t have engaged him in that fight, but he had a talent for pushing her buttons that no one else had quite managed. 

There was something about him that told her there was more than met the eye. Ever since she’d heard Han and Leia talk about him as their son she’d spent time trying to nitpick their encounter on her first night, trying to find Ben Solo within Kylo Ren. It wasn’t until this particular night, though, when they’d talked and almost flirted that she saw those hints of the light side poking through. Perhaps a change in him could be instilled. Perhaps, despite likely being dead for decades, there was still hope for him. 

  
She’d promised him that she wouldn’t be speaking to him again, but she’d also told his parents he could be brought back to the light. Her head turned back in the direction of the main staircase, back to where somewhere, two floors up, Kylo was now wax. A smirk grew on her features not unlike the one he’d given her in their fight,  _ Game on,  _ she thought,  _ see you tonight.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The other characters will make an appearance in the third act, I've got a big plan for that one, lots of stuff, and even more in the fourth and fifth. Sorry it took so long, hopefully I have the third act done by the end of the week. Thanks for being patient, guys.


	3. Act Three: Nights Six-Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant to put this out earlier, but I had a long ass shift this morning... and it started at six thirty... So your local author took the biggest fucking nap instead. Anyway, it's here, and it's probably the last mostly funny chapter as we dive into a lot of plot related shit in the next two and deliver on that promise of angst.

When Rey woke up that afternoon, something instantly felt off. She’d gotten used to waking up and remembering the museum and all its wonders, but something about that particular morning—well, afternoon—felt more odd than usual, and she couldn’t quite place it. For once, she looked out and saw a sky rapidly turning shades of pink and purple and yellow with the setting of the sun, and at first, she was unfazed. 

Then she realized what the setting of the sun meant. 

“Shit!” She cried, reaching for her phone to find that it was already pushing five pm, and given that it was January, the sun would be setting in a mere fifteen minutes. She would have to haul ass to work. 

Resisting the urge to fall back into her pillow, Rey pushed herself out of bed and made a mad dash to put on her uniform. It took her a minute to find it. That morning when she’d come home, she was exhausted from the fight she’d engaged in with Kylo, and not thinking straight. She had no idea where her uniform was located, and the museum couldn’t begin its night without the night guard. 

She’d promised Kylo she wouldn’t see him again, but that had been before she had a new bone to pick with him. Now she had every intention of finding him and promptly screaming at him—possibly with the help of a lightsaber. 

Eventually, she found her uniform lying on her bathroom floor, and with ten minutes before sundown, she threw on her clothes. She tied her hair back into a bun on the elevator ride down from her apartment, the usually slow lift moving at a mercifully swifter speed that day. The moment it landed on the bottom floor, Rey was a bat out of hell. 

She raced down the city streets, keeping track of the time as she went. At one point, she ran across a crosswalk when the red hand indicating she needed to stop was up, and in her hurry she barely noticed the cars honking at her as brakes squealed to avoid collision. There wasn’t time to dwell on it, the sun was almost completely down. 

Rey barreled through the doors just as a very startled Larry was beginning to lock them. “Sorry I’m late, I was more tired than I thought.”

“I’m just glad you’re here, I thought I’d have to guard the museum in your stead.”

She paused, then she leaned against the front desk, “You can do that?”

“I was the museum’s first night guard. Stands to reason I could still do the job if I needed to, I just prefer not to. I’m too old.”

Rey quirked an eyebrow at him, but didn’t protest, “Is everything locked up?”

“All the elevators, the fifth floor, all taken care of. All that’s left is the front door,” Larry confirmed, then he looked back outside to where the sun was now completing its descent beneath the skyline. A worried crease formed on his brow, but before Rey could question it, her manager bid her good night, and made a hasty exit from the museum as if he couldn’t get away fast enough.

As she locked the doors behind him, Rey wondered just why the hell her boss always rushed out of the museum like a bat out of hell despite having been the museum’s first nightguard. He’d claimed he was now too old for this, but she still felt like whatever he wasn’t telling her--that damned secret he’d been keeping in the near week since she’d started at the museum-- was the primary reason. 

Just when Rey was finishing locking the doors, she heard the familiar sound of BB-8 rolling from his place, and she turned around with a smile on her face as the little droid raced toward her. She bent down with a quick, “Hi,” as she began to lightly run her hands over his smooth surface, and looked up to find Luke staring at her, and suddenly she understood why Larry had run so fast this time around. The museum had already been awake.

“Hi,” she said to him this time, watching as he walked down the stairs with a warm smile on his face. 

“Late?” he asked, observing her proximity to the door.

Rey sighed, then nodded in a hint of the shame she was feeling. She’d never slept through her alarms before. On her first day, she’d managed to get out of bed even with a wicked hangover. To be brought down now by mere exhaustion? She was definitely finding Kylo at some point, if only to scream at him for doing this to her. Then she’d promptly leave him alone to be evil, and everything would be as it should be. “Unfortunately,” she told Luke, “I slept through my alarms.” She scratched at her head, “I’ve never done that.”

“Happens to the best of us,” Luke said with a shrug, “You sure you’re up for training tonight?”

She thought for a moment, remembering how the fight the previous evening had gone; the way she’d gained the upper hand on Kylo, the way he’d fallen to the ground at the end of their battle. Sure it had only ended because the sun was coming up and he had no choice, but still she suspected she would’ve been the victor either way. Perhaps due to her exhaustion she ought to take him up on the offer. A break sounded like a nice prospect. She’d been training each night with him for the past five days, so it stood to reason that she could use a night off to be around the friends she’d made.

“Maybe not tonight.”

Luke smiled warmly, “Don’t worry about it, you’ve got time,” he said, then before he could say anything else, BB-8 was rolling toward the elevator, eager to be reunited with Poe. 

The three of them found the Resistance commander on the third floor patrolling the halls outside of the one he belonged to. His hands were folded behind his back as he stared blankly ahead of him, seeming to not see where he was going. It took three tries of Rey calling out his name and BB-8 chirping wildly as he bumped into his feet for Poe to so much as look up in her direction. 

She waved at him, then Luke tapped her shoulder and told her he’d be heading back to the second floor.  They said their goodbyes, then Rey headed in Poe’s direction, “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, fine. Why?”

“You just… I don’t know. You looked… out of it.”

Poe scoffed, though the intent behind it was light hearted, “I  _ feel  _ out of it.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes it happens,” he said, “Not just to me, but to all of us. We’re… sad and confused, but no one can remember why.”

That missing year of data came to mind, and she wondered if what Poe was describing had anything to do with whatever had happened in that last year. Before she could voice her concern, Poe was quickly snapped out of his trance by whatever thought crossed his mind next. “It doesn’t matter, though. What I want to know is what you’re doing here. Don’t you have training with Luke?”

Rey looked at him with a hint of disappointment at his subject change, but quickly decided it wasn’t worth it to press something he wasn’t comfortable discussing. “Not tonight, no,” she told him, “I almost missed the shift, I slept in, so he’s giving me the night off. I’m all yours tonight.”

“Why’d you sleep in? You could’ve missed my lovely face.”

“It’s all Kylo’s fault, really,” she said, remembering the rage she’d felt the night before as she and the dark sider’s lightsabers clashed. 

Poe’s eyebrows furrowed in a mix of anger and curiosity, “Why’s that?”

Rey looked around them, finding that they were surrounded by the resistance as usual. People were walking in and out of the hallway, giving them nods as they passed, and just ten feet away, Leia and Han were bickering quietly. They looked like they could use the same privacy she was needing for this conversation, but she didn’t quite know where to go.

Where in the museum could she talk to Poe about what had happened the previous night? With Luke they’d only had BB-8 in the lobby with them. And with Luke she didn’t have to disclose Kylo Ren’s odd, almost flirtatious behavior during their fight the night before. She certainly didn’t want the entire resistance knowing everything. Sure they had all bonded some, but she considered Poe to be her closest friend at the museum so far. Well, him and Luke, but when Luke spent most of his time with her teaching her how to use a lightsaber, they had more of a professional relationship than anything. 

It came to her then that there was one hallway in the museum that no one resided in except for one person who never left it. She took Poe’s hand, and began walking towards it, “Follow me.”

She waited until they were out of sight of the resistance hallway before she started talking. She started to explain to him in detail what had happened the previous evening with Kylo, and she had gotten to the part where they’d engaged in combat before they came upon the doors to the hallway. “It’s not exactly scandalous, but… I didn’t want the whole museum gossiping.”

“You’re making it sound worse than it is,” Poe replied as Rey unlocked the doors. 

Her eyes rolled back in her head as she unlocked the door, and they pushed the door open to reveal the hallway inside. As usual, the stormtrooper was leaning against a golden column, though this time his helmet was in his hands, and a shocked, dark skinned face was staring at them with his mouth in an O.

The three of them blinked at each other for a moment, Rey’s mouth falling open in a similarly shocked expression. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting. Obviously something was underneath the stormtrooper’s hoods, but she sure as hell hadn’t anticipated a detailed, kind looking face with frightened eyes staring back at her. She had expected them to basically be mannequins beneath those helmets, lifeless, soulless mannequins. She hadn’t expected this. 

“Oh, Rey, hi,” the stormtrooper said, his voice surprisingly crisp and clear, though again she wasn’t sure what she’d expected from him, “I’m sorry, it’s um... it’s stuffy in there, sometimes you need a minute to breathe.”

“No, no, it’s alright… I’ve just… I’ve never seen one of you without your… helmet on…” She could barely process her words, barely register herself saying him, though it got easier as the initial shock began to wear off.    


“Neither have I,” Poe replied, “And it’s been nearly forty years.” She glanced over at the commander to find him in a similar state of shock, but his was accompanied by a sort of delight she couldn’t place, and a flush to his cheeks. 

The three of them fell into another moment of silence as they took each other in, but it was broken by Poe a minute later, “But if all of you look like that, I’d like to see this more often.” A smirk followed the statement, and a rosy color developed on the stormtrooper’s features as Poe walked further into the hall. 

“You’ve just met him, and you’re already flirting?” Rey teased as she followed him, stopping when they were a few feet away from the trooper.

Poe shrugged, not even bothering to defend himself, “What?”

“You don’t even know his name.”

“I’m FN-2187,” the stormtrooper told them, fingers anxiously gripping the helmet in his hands.

“That’s not a name, that’s a designation,” Poe said, his mouth forming into a frown as he crossed his arms over his chest, “Do you not have a real name?”

“No, that’s just what was written on my box when they shipped me in.”

It occurred to Rey that all of the stormtroopers truly didn’t have their own, individual identity, and thus wouldn’t have names, but still it broke her heart a little. For forty years this man had gone by a number, and she doubted anyone even called him that. She wondered how many of the night guards in the past had actually bothered to come into this hall and talk to the trooper. She certainly hadn’t. All she had done was go into this hall twice. She hadn’t been here since her second night, but now she intended to come by much more frequently.

“Sounds like you need a new name, then,” Poe replied, bringing her thoughts back to the present, “FN… How’s Finn? Can we call you Finn?”

“Why would you call me anything?”

“Because in the fifteen years since you defected, I’ve just passed you by and ignored you,” Poe explained, his face growing sympathetic as any trace of suggestiveness from earlier faded, “I didn’t realize you had a face and no name, and I feel awful about it.”

The corners of the stormtrooper’s mouth lifted slightly, and he sighed, “Finn sounds nice, then.”

Rey and Poe smiled at the same time, and they glanced at each other as the latter of the two rolled the name off of his tongue a few times, “Finn… Finn the stormtrooper,” Poe muttered, “I like it.”

“I like it, too,” Rey replied, “It suits you.”

The stormtrooper’s cheeks flushed again, and Rey realized that it was very likely that no one had talked to him since fifteen years prior when they’d decided what to do with him after his defection. He’d been alone for years, and while she understood what that was like on some level, it was nothing compared to what he’d likely been facing. Night in and night out he’d been standing there guarding the tablet, taking his punishment for things he’d done under the first order. She wondered if that was long enough, if he could finally be free. 

Poe was saying something to the stormtrooper that had the two men laughing as she watched, though she was too deep into her own thoughts to register whatever it was that they were talking about. All she knew was that she had to talk to Poe and the others about freeing him from his job, or at least designate alternate people who could do it, trading out nights whenever they needed to. The lone trooper had been virtually alone for over a decade. It was time that things changed for him.

“Rey?” Poe’s voice asked after a moment, “You alright?”

She shuddered a little as she came out of her trance, then her eyes focused on him and she gave him a warm smile, “I’m fine, just a little… lost in thought.” 

“Well, I was just saying to Finn that you’ve got a whole museum to watch and we can’t stay here forever,” Poe said, leaving Finn’s side to walk toward her. 

“Right…” Rey replied, then she shook her head, “I’m… I’m going to head back out to the rest of the museum, make sure everything’s alright. You can stay here, Poe, if you like.”

“Are you sure?” Poe looked hesitant to leave her behind, but his eyes kept flicking back to the stormtrooper, and a smile was blooming on his face. He clearly wasn’t too disappointed at the prospect of being left behind with the admittedly attractive trooper.

She gave him a nod, “Positive. Someone has to keep our new friend company.”

“New friend?” Finn asked, his expression warm as he joined Poe at his side. 

“Yeah,” she replied, then she turned on Poe, “No flirting.”

“But what about that thing you wanted to tell me? About you and…?”

“It can wait,” she assured him, “Come find me later, we can talk about it then.”

“But—?”

She giggled a little as she began to walk from the hall, “No buts,” she told him, then she gave him a quick wink as she left he hall completely. 

The encounter left her in a bit of a haze as she thought over what had just transpired. She’d seen a lot of weird things at the museum in the near week since she started working there, but it still managed to surprise her. Still, there had to be something she hadn’t seen, some way it could render her utterly speechless once more. The corners of her mouth turned up into a smile as she thought over what that might be. 

The stormtrooper had been among the most shocking things she’d witnessed thus far. It was up there with the initial discovery that the museum was actually alive, but she was fairly certain that nothing could manage to beat that. Though in hindsight, she shouldn’t have been that surprised that there was a normal looking face under that mask. She remembered the first time she’d seen Kylo’s face; the expectations she’d had then had been far different from the reality, and how normal it had appeared compared to her ideas of a wickedly scowling mad man. She hadn’t expected anything at all for Finn, though, and that’s what made his unmasking so shocking. 

She was pulled ever so slightly from her train of thought as she walked through the Resistance hallways, and her friends waved at her as she passed. She waved back at all of them, only stopping when she reached a lone Han Solo, who was looking behind her in confusion as she approached, “Where’s Dameron?”

A chuckle left her lips, “Flirting,” she deadpanned, then she stopped walking, and leaned against the wall to talk to Han. 

“Sounds about right.”

The two shared a brief laugh, then Rey looked around them, and noticed that Leia was not only absent from his side, but she didn’t appear to be present in the hall at all. “Where’s…?”

“She’s off talking to her brother,” Han explained. 

“Oh, I’ve just never seen her leave the Resistance hall.”

“She doesn’t do it often, but don’t worry about it too much. We’re not the hall you have to watch out for.” His gaze drifted up towards the ceiling, and not a moment too soon. 

As if Han had somehow summoned trouble, there was a loud crashing noise from above, and the faint sound of someone shouting. Rey quickly got up from the wall, and promised to return once she was done checking out whatever was going on up on the fourth floor. She had almost no doubt that the noise had come from Kylo. All her troubles at the museum so far seemed to lead back to him, and she was fully prepared to storm up there with all of her rage and kick his ass to the floor all over again. 

She stormed up the stairs with a fury she hadn’t known she possessed, her blood pumping in her veins as she passed the lightsaber display down the hall. She grabbed one off the display, and prepared to light it for a no doubt exhausting round two with Kylo, but as she searched for the source of the noise, she didn’t hear the sound of his modulated voice haunting the halls. Instead, she heard an augmented female voice bickering with a familiar sounding British accent from around the corner near where the knights of Ren were on display. 

Rey leaned against the wall as she listened to their hushed voices, unable to make out exactly what they were saying from her hallway. Slowly, she crept closer to the corner where the two corridors met, and tuned her ears to their conversation. 

“... in the next few days? It’s impossible,” the male’s voice was saying, “We need at least another week to get our resources together. Ren hasn’t gathered nearly enough supplies.”

“We’ll have to make it possible, general,” the woman replied, and Rey wondered if she might be one of the Knights of Ren for a moment. She hadn’t heard any of them talk, so it seemed possible, but somehow she doubted that any of them would be talking to a first order general. As far as she was aware, and based off of what their description read beside their display, they reported strictly to Kylo. “It’s been forty years.”

Technically it had been thirty eight since they started coming to life, but she didn’t particularly mind the woman’s rounding up. The voices quieted again as Rey listened, and she quickly realized that her position was no longer any good. 

There were only mere inches left of the wall for her to hide herself behind, and she had no idea how far away from her the conversing first order members were. Still, she had to figure out what was going on, and why there had been such a loud crash. Since there were two of them she didn’t exactly fancy revealing herself and attempting to take them on as she had with Kylo the previous evening. One on one combat was one thing, but two on one combat was a whole other ball park she had yet to attempt. 

She began to cautiously tiptoe along the remaining inches of wall she had left for cover, moving so slowly she wondered if she was actually moving at all. 

It would turn out she was indeed moving a second later when her foot met a loose piece of the wooden base lining the wall, and she cried out as she tripped into the adjacent hallway, right into view of the two people she’d been spying on. 

There was a moment of silence as she felt two pairs of eyes lock into her, and she looked up to find the figures of General Hux and Captain Phasma staring back at her. Realization dawned on her as she noticed the metallic stormtrooper armor Phasma donned, and suddenly the voice modulator and the talk with the general made a lot more sense. She only wished she’d gotten more of the conversation down before she fucked up and exposed herself. 

“Shit,” she said, becoming the first to break the silence that had fallen upon the hall as the three of them stared each other down. 

“What the hell are you doing here?” Hux asked, his mouth forming a sneer as he glared daggers at her. She was suddenly very grateful she hadn’t encountered him much until this night, and she had a feeling she wouldn’t be looking forward to seeing him again. 

“I’m the night guard and I heard a noise,” she said plainly. It wasn’t exactly a lie, she had indeed heard a loud banging sound from this particular floor. “I came up here to see what was going on.”

Phasma scoffed, “Ask Kylo,” she muttered bitterly, though before she could say anything else, Hux quickly shushed her. 

“Don’t tell her anything else, we can’t have her knowing what we were just discussing.”

“And why can’t I know what you were just discussing?” Rey asked, only to receive silence in return. She sighed, “You’re going after the tablet, aren’t you?”

The continued silence was all the answer she needed as she ignited the lightsaber in her hand, and held it up high in preparation for a battle she’d likely lose, “Not on my watch.”

“And what are you going to do to stop us?” Hux asked as he and Phasma began to approach Rey, “It’s two against one, and that lightsaber can’t actually harm any of us.”

“I can try.”

“She’s got a lot more spunk than most of them do,” Phasma said, sparing a glance at Hux as they drew closer, and Rey began to retreat toward the back wall. 

“Yes, but I wonder if she’ll… what’s the expression Sebastian used to use? Put her money where her mouth is.”

Rey gulped anxiously, but she held the lightsaber firmly in her hands as two of the first order’s worst villains continued to encroach on her. Before she was ready, her back made contact with the wall, and both of her opponents had drawn their weapons. Hux held a blaster in his hand, and Phasma held some sort of sword in hers. Their gazes—though she couldn’t see Phasma’s eyes—were intimidating, but her own never faltered. Her eyes bore into theirs in the same exact way. 

“I defeated Kylo last night, do you really want to find out what I can do to the two of you?” She asked, hoping she sounded more menacing than she felt. 

Neither of them got the chance to answer, at that moment, another familiar modulated voice entered her ears, “I wouldn’t really call last night a defeat,” Kylo replied, and as Phasma and Hux turned around she saw Kylo approaching them from down the hall flanked by all six knights. “You have an unfair advantage at sunrise.”

Rey crossed her arms as she stepped forward, “Or maybe you’re just a big, clumsy moron who can’t handle a lightsaber.”

“Are you suggesting a rematch?” 

“I was a bit busy with your asshole friends, actually, maybe later, though,” she replied, finding she almost enjoyed the banter with her enemy as they walked toward each other. 

Kylo paused a moment, and turned to look past her at Hux and Phasma, who were staring between the two of them in disbelief. 

Rey couldn’t see Phasma’s face, but she’d bet good money it had the same, visible, “What the fuck?” That Hux’s was displaying. 

“General, Captain, return to your positions. I’ll meet you there when I’m done,” he said to Phasma and Hux, then he looked back at Rey, “You and I have some unfinished business.”

“But, Ren—” Hux began, only to receive what must have been an enraged, piercing stare behind that mask Kylo always wore. The stare seemed to have the desired effect on him, for a second later, Hux cocked his head in Kylo’s direction, and the two of them headed off down the hallway, leaving Rey alone with one of her least favorite people once again. 

As soon as Phasma and Hux were gone, Kylo reached up, and removed his helm, setting it down beside a nearby display of a miniature TIE silencer. He then turned and looked at her as he removed his lightsaber from his belt, “You won’t win this time, the sun won’t be up for hours.”

“I’ll go all night if I have to,” she replied, then she quickly realized how bad that sounded. When she looked up at Kylo’s face, a smirk had already formed, and she glared in response, “Are you kidding me?”

“What?”

“You know, thanks to you I slept in late. I nearly missed this shift because of that fight.”

“Doesn’t sound like you have the stamina to ‘go all night,’” Kylo teased, his eyes never leaving hers as he ignited his saber, and the red blade emerged, glowing and angry.

Rey was ready to punch him. She made a mental note later to yell at Han for his son’s tendency to push all the right buttons in a very typically Solo way. “Try me,” she hissed at him, walking towards him with her own ignited saber, and striking overhead in a strike he was quick to block, just like the previous evening. She could only hope that she would be able to follow through on her promise to fight him all night as they began their second battle. 

She advanced on him with a burst of energy, her blade slashing through the air in what she hoped was an intimidating show of light. A part of her was disappointed that her saber wouldn’t actually be able to cause him harm, but another part remembered what Luke had been saying in his training about how Jedi were only supposed to injure or kill as a last resort. While she wasn’t really a Jedi, she still figured it would be better to avoid the stern talking too from her instructor if he found out the trail her thoughts were following. 

Her opponent retreated accordingly, and while he took up the defense, she could tell he was watching her every move, paying close attention to her weaknesses and strengths as he met her every strike with a matching one of his own. 

Unfortunately for her, he regained the offensive position more quickly than she would’ve liked, and he began unleashing attack after attack as he backed her up back down the hall they’d come from. She knew eventually her back would meet the wall again, and a plan began to form in her mind. Taking the defensive against him, she let him lead her further back into the hall, and when her back made contact with the wall, she smiled even as their blades locked.

But plans never seemed to work out when it came to him, and as he pressed his weight into their blade lock, one of his thighs made contact with hers and she realized just how close they were. Their faces were inches apart beyond the lock of their sabers, and his eyes bore into hers with a mix of readable emotions in them. Though the fight was somewhat violent in its nature, there was something almost mischievous in the way he was looking at her. “Still think you can hold out all night?”

“You watch me,” she replied, then she ducked out from under the lock, and began to advance back down the hallway with the same viciousness he’d shown her as she’d retreated a moment earlier. 

Kylo shook his head as she slashed at him again and again, responding to her attacks in kind, and after a while they reached a balance where neither of them could advance more than two steps before the other gained the upper hand. “You’re holding out longer than I thought you would,” Kylo told her as he locked their blades again, “It’s a good thing you managed to get up.” His face was teasing, but his tone was harsh, and she felt the heat of anger rising within her all over again.

Rey glared at him, pressing harder into their latest blade lock as she intensified her stare, “You’ll pay for what you did.”   
  


Kylo simply chuckled, “Sweetheart, I’m made of wax and trapped in a museum full of people I hate. I’m already paying for it.”

It took her a moment to process his statement, then before she knew it, she was laughing. A genuine, honest laugh left her lips, and a hand clasped over her mouth as she leaned against the wall. He looked at her in confusion for a second, then almost reluctantly, he too was laughing, and they deactivated their sabers.

The moment passed slowly; never developing into obnoxious chortling, but never quite leaving its easy delight either. For the first time, Rey found herself not looking at Kylo in contempt, but in understanding. She could now see the boy who had once been Han’s son, the man who had once stood in the light. He was standing before her now, a soft smile on his face and a laugh she found she enjoyed the sound of. 

Kylo stopped laughing before she did, his posture straightening as his gaze fell upon something that had appeared at the far end of the hallway. She followed his eyes to where they’d landed on the elderly figure of his father, who was looking between the two of them in shock, likely just as surprised as she was that she’d made the dark sider laugh. 

“Ben?” Han asked, and suddenly Kylo went completely stiff, his arms falling to his sides and his eyes to the floor. 

“That’s not my name.”

Han stepped forward, beginning to walk down the hallway toward them, “Bull shit,” he said, “I don’t care what you’re calling yourself, your name is the one your mother and I gave you,  _ Ben. _ ”

Rey watched Kylo’s hand twitch toward his lightsaber, and she quickly stood up off the wall, preparing to come between them if need be. “Don’t,” she warned him. 

“We’ve had this argument before,” Kylo said, ignoring Rey, “At least twice a year over the past forty. You come and beg me to come back, and what do I say every time?”

Han looked more defeated than Rey had ever seen him. No, not defeated—  _ tired.  _ He looked tired as he approached them, the lines on his face never more clear than in that moment, “You always tell me no.”

“So how do you think this will end?”

“I haven’t even asked you to come back, kid, I’ve given up trying.”

“What are you doing here, then?”

“You’ve kept our night guard up here for a little too long, everyone was starting to get suspicious.”

Rey gave Han a brief, soft smile, “I’m fine, Han, we were just talking.” She turned to Kylo, “You know, you’re funny when you’re not doing the work of a fascist overlord,” Rey said, and his eyes rolled backwards in his head. 

A scoff left Kylo’s lips, “As if I have a choice.”

“What does that mean?” She asked. 

“It means we all have roles to play, and I know mine. Clearly not everyone's the same way.” He looked at his father with a mixture of anger and regret, and she could see that boy once again, the one who had tried for so long to be good. He was still struggling against the darkness even after he was more than likely dead and only living in the form of a wax figure in a museum. 

Sensing he wouldn’t cave in front of his father, Rey turned to Han, “Tell the others I’m fine,” she told him, “Make sure Poe isn’t trying to rally the troops. Knowing him he’s already plotting something stupid. I’ll be down soon I just… I want to finish up here.”

Han looked between her and Kylo hesitantly, but after a while he gave her a nod, “Stay safe, kid,” he said, then he disappeared back down the hallway. 

Once Han was gone, Rey turned back to Kylo, who was eyeballing the hallway he’d come from with longing in his eyes as if he’d rather have been anywhere else. She wasn’t going to give him the opportunity to run away so easily, “Don’t even think about it, I’m not done with you.”

Kylo’s eyes found hers again, and in them she could see the same sadness and misery she’d seen in Poe’s at the beginning of the night. That same sense of being sorrowful and confused without knowing why was crossing his features, though this time she suspected he actually had a clue as to what was causing this. 

“Are you alright?” She fought the urge to place a hand on his arm, remembering vaguely that she was still supposed to be mad at him as she fought her sympathetic side. 

It took him another several seconds to come out of his trance, his eyes focusing on hers as the sadness faded from his features. But it remained steady in his eyes, in the way here was a slight mist over his irises. She wondered if these people were capable of crying, or if they were forever doomed to just be sad with no relief. “I’m fine.”

“That’s what people who aren’t fine say,” Rey told him, “Um… I know we don’t particularly like each other, but you could tell me about it… if you want. It’s sort of my job to look after all of you.”

Kylo smirked, “The night guard, always watching,” he said, then he sighed, “You’re not the first one who’s tried to break through to me, you know. Every single one of them has tried, especially the first.”

“Maybe I’ll be the first to succeed, then.”

“You can try. I won’t change my mind, I know where my loyalties lie.”

Rey shook her head at him, and crossed her arms over her chest, “Maybe I can’t, but…”

“What?”

“Why do you hate your father?”

The man standing before her froze in place; a deer in headlights. A thousand thoughts flashed behind his eyes, a thousand memories from an incomplete data bank came to the forefront of his mind as she watched him struggle to conjure the answer to her question. “I don’t.”

“Then why don’t you talk to him? Tell him that you still care.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

He said nothing, his eyes simply drifted up to the ceiling, and as she followed his gaze she remembered just who he was working for. Snoke—though he’d only ever left the fifth floor a few times— held tremendous power over him and the other residents of the fourth floor. If he was disobeyed, there would somehow be consequences for Kylo, and they’d likely be severe. Still, she would bet all she was worth that there had to be some way for him to reunite with his family without alerting Snoke to the fact. 

“You can’t,” she repeated his statement from a moment prior, her tone softening as she came to an understanding of why he had avoided them for forty years. 

“I’ve been angry with them.” His gaze fell back to her, “I’ve been angry with the choices they made that led me here. With all the things that left  _ me  _ with no other option but Snoke, but I don’t hate him. And I can’t tell him that, I can’t have him knowing or Snoke…”

“What?”

He shuddered so slightly she almost missed it, and a sigh escaped his lips, “He has an influence on me. He can make my life hell if I disobey him, and after forty years…”

“But what can he do? He’s trapped on the fifth floor, and you’ve got a whole family who would protect you. They’ve been reaching out to you for—“

“Forty years,” Kylo answered, “And Snoke’s had an iron grip on my mind for that entire time. Even now I’m fighting the control he has. He doesn’t have his force abilities either, but somehow… somehow he’s more powerful than all of us. And I…”

Rey leaned forward, listening intently as he spoke, “You what?”

“I thought maybe if I brought him the tablet, he’d leave me alone. He’d do what he promised, bring the force to this galaxy and I could use it to break free.”

It all sounded too good to be true. That Kylo wasn’t as big and bad as everyone made it out to be seemed impossible, and yet… Suddenly she frowned, realizing that everything he was saying might have been a clever lie spun to convince her to let him have the tablet. It was starting to sound like he wanted her to let him have the tablet out of sympathy for him, and she was sure as hell not going to let him win like that. “Is this a trick?”

“What?”

“You heard me,” she replied, “You’ve been trying to get that tablet for Snoke for forty years, and you’re telling me it’s so you can break free of whatever hold he has on you?”

“Yes.”

“And I’m just supposed to believe that you want to do it for good reasons compared to the dark, twisted ones he wants you to do it for?”

Realization dawned visibly on Kylo’s face, and it paled somewhat—again she found herself questioning the biology of these people—as it occurred to him what she was implying. “Yes,” he said, his tone completely serious as his eyes locked on hers, “Everything I’m telling you is true. I’m not asking you to get me the tablet, I’m telling you why I can’t talk to them. He’ll know if I’ve spoken to them, he might think I’ve changed my allegiance.”

“But what can he  _ do?” _

Kylo froze, “I don’t know… I’ve never known, it’s always just been…”

“Fear.” The one syllable word hung in the air between them, but remained unspoken. Rey once again resisted the urge to touch him, knowing full well that they weren’t anywhere near that level just yet as silence fell over them. 

“Maybe it’s time you start figuring it out,” Rey replied, her voice softer than it had ever been around him. 

Initially, all he gave in response was a shrug, though he looked uncomfortable as his eyes wandered back down the hallway toward where his display was located, “I should go,” he said, “And so should you, I’ve kept Hux and Phasma waiting for too long.”

She wanted to protest, but she soon realized he was right. The general and the captain were waiting for him to come back from having defeated her in battle, and they’d stopped fighting at least fifteen minutes ago. He’d been gone for a while, and she didn’t doubt that they’d come back eventually to make sure she hadn’t defeated  _ him _ . 

With a slight groan, Rey nodded, and motioned for him to leave. But as he turned to go, she called out after him, “Kylo!”

He turned his head to look at her, and that sadness was more present in that moment than ever in his eyes, “What?”

“I’ll be back tomorrow, we’re still not done.”

A trace of his familiar smirk appeared on his features, “We’ll see,” he said, then he began to walk back down the hallway to wherever Hux and Phasma were still waiting for him. 

Rey watched him retreat with an odd feeling in her gut, one that kept her in her place for perhaps a minute too long after he left her alone in the hallway. Eventually though, she turned around and left the fourth floor, descending the stairs at a fast pace that had her nearly tripping over her own feet as she rejoined her friends back on the third. 

The next four nights progressed much the same way. Each night she would begin by training with Luke for an hour or two, depending on how exhausted her fights with Kylo from the previous evenings would make her feel, but she was getting stronger each time it happened. After training she’d meet Poe and Finn, but with how close it appeared the two of them were getting—she’d already caught them with their faces mere inches apart one night— she consistently felt like she was intruding on something she wasn’t supposed to see. 

After that she would go back up to the fourth floor and talk—or more accurately, banter during battle--with Kylo, and try to convince him to go about seeing his family again in a different way than giving the tablet to Snoke. Hell, she even tried to sneak in hints that he needed to trade sides again completely some of those nights, and by the end of the fourth night—her tenth at the museum— she thought she’d made some progress. 

They were in the middle of their latest fight, and she was winning—she’d won two of the last three— until he suddenly extinguished his saber in the middle of it, and she followed suit shortly after. “Why’d you do that?” she asked, “Afraid I’ll kick your ass a third night in a row?”

He shook his head, and the rage and passion from their fight faded into that same sorrow that she’d seen the night he saw Han. “No,” he replied plainly, then he closed his eyes, and for a moment she watched him visibly war with himself, “I… I want to see them… Snoke’s moving forward with his plan soon, and… the way he’s been to all of us—not just me… I’ve started to think you’re right.”

“About…?” Her heart raced in her chest as a sense of hope washed over her in waves. 

“I need to tell them I don’t hate them,” he told her, lowering his voice as he looked around the hallway, “We can’t talk about this here.”

She nodded in agreement, then she motioned for him to follow her, and the two of them walked together towards the stairwell to the third floor, walking about halfway down the steps before Rey stopped them, and leaned against the rail on the left hand side, “You’re not playing me, are you?”

Kylo shook his head, and a deep, somewhat shaky breath left his lips, “No, I’m not,” he replied, then another moment of quiet settled over them before he spoke again, “Rey, I don’t trust them, they’re… they’re the reason I’m here instead of down there with them, but… Kylo Ren was someone else, he’s dead somewhere in another galaxy. I just wear his face.”

It hit her then that he was right. None of them were actually the people they appeared to be. None of them had done any of the great or terrible things that their plaques read, they were just figures carrying the histories of people who were either certainly dead or more likely than not dead. “I need to talk to them one more time before I go forward with the plan to bring him the tablet,” he begged her.

She looked up at him sympathetically, “What about the rest of the resistance?” she asked, “They’ll try to attack you the moment you set foot on their floor.”

“Just bring them, then, bring them to me,” he said, then he paused for a moment, “Then leave us.”

“You want me to bring them now? Here?”

He nodded to both, and Rey rested a hand on his arm as at last she ignored the ground rules that had been unspokenly set between them that designated no touching beyond when they fought. They looked down at where her hand was pressed gently against the fabric of his tunic, and then up at each other. 

She couldn’t speak for him, but she felt something pass between them, a sense of belonging--togetherness. Unlike the awkwardness she’d expected, the contact felt surprisingly nice, and she hadn’t expected him to feel so warm beneath her palm. Perhaps they were truly human at night.

Neither one of them said anything as their eyes locked, and Rey could hear her pulse humming in her ear as her heart began to beat a little faster in her chest. 

“I’ll… I’ll be right back,” she told him, then she dropped her hand from his arm, and descended the stairs, not daring to look back as she walked back into the third floor. 

A stupid grin developed on her face as she walked back to the Resistance hallway, and the moment Han and Leia were in sight, she forced herself to school her expression. She was about to tell them their son was returning to them, or at least that he intended to. Kylo still hadn’t promised to denounce the dark side and Snoke completely, he’d just asked to see them. She’d made so much progress with him that she feared pushing him too far too fast would cause him to regress on what he’d accomplish, and she didn’t want that. 

“General!” She called out as she approached them, and both Han and Leia turned at the sound of the label. 

Continuing to keep up her charade of calm, she breathed in deeply before she spoke again, “I need you to come with me.”

“What for?” Leia asked, “Has something happened to the tablet?”

“No, I just…” she began, then she sighed, “Just trust me.” She gave them another look, then she headed off in the direction of the fourth floor stairwell, making sure that they followed her as she went. 

“What’s so urgent that we can’t hear it in this hall?” Han asked. 

“I promise, you’ll want to see this.”

“But what is it?”

“Han,” Leia scolded as he began to take on the tone of an insistent five year old.

Han muttered an apology as the corners of Rey’s mouth twitched into a smile, and as they rounded the corner that led to the fourth floor stairwell, she watched his and Leia’s faces fall somewhat. Concern and a twinge of fear radiated off of the two of them as they looked up at the doors, and Rey sighed, “You can trust me,” she promised them, “He wants to talk. We’ve been making progress over the last few nights, and he’s ready. I can’t tell you that he’s coming back, but he does want to see you. Both of you.”

Kylo’s parents gave each other worried looks, but eventually they continued on the path with her toward the doors, and walked through once she held the doors open for them. 

The man himself stood somewhat intimidatingly a few steps up, staring down at them with an odd look in his eyes that she couldn’t quite make out. He gave her a nod as his parents walked into the stairwell, and she returned the gesture before she began to back out of the room slowly, not breaking eye contact until she turned to walk out the door..

“I thought she was going to tell us they were together,” Han muttered to Leia when he must’ve thought she was out of earshot. The line brought a flush to Rey’s cheeks, but the smacking sound that followed after as the doors shut behind her had her outright giggling. She walked away with a smile on her face, and wandered off to find Finn and Poe.

She found the pilot and the former stormtrooper just outside the hallway of the tablet. Finn was leaning against the wall, and Poe had himself propped up on one arm, holding the wall with his hand just above Finn’s shoulder as they talked in the same hushed voices she’d heard for the past several nights. The commander’s mischievous grin was visible even from a distance, and as Rey watched, he laughed before he leaned in, and pressed a kiss to Finn’s lips. 

As Finn reached up to cup Poe’s jaw, she felt her cheeks turn pink anew, and she cleared her throat teasingly as her arms crossed over her chest, “No fraternizing in my museum!” she called out sarcastically. 

“Shut up,” Poe replied, breaking the kiss only for a second before he quickly resumed it. 

Finn broke it a second later, and the two of them pushed away from their position at the wall as they walked toward Rey, “Where’ve you been?”

“Fighting with Kylo again,” she replied plainly, then she remembered all that had happened since he’d abruptly ended their fight about twenty minutes prior, and she scoffed lightly, “It took a bit of a turn.”

“Really?” Poe asked, a hint of suggestiveness in his tone. 

“Not like that, Poe,” she explained, then she sighed, “He wanted to talk to his family. I… They’re all in there right now, in the fourth floor stairwell, just… talking.”

Poe looked thoroughly shocked, “Just talking? Is he changing sides?”

She shook her head, “I don’t know,” she replied, “But the fact that he’s even talking to them is a good sign.”

“If we can get Kylo Ren on our side, you might not have to guard the tablet anymore,” Poe said, looking at Finn with a gleeful affection. 

“That’d be great,” Finn replied, then he looked down at his stormtrooper armor, “Maybe I could get out of these for a change. Officially join your team.”

“I’d love to get you-”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Rey warned Poe, though the glare she gave him was of light hearted intent. 

Poe put his hands up as he laughed obnoxiously, the other two joining him a moment later. As the moment carried on, Rey became more certain than ever that she’d laughed more in the last ten days than she had in her entire lifetime. Perhaps she hadn’t intended to become a museum night guard for anything more than making rent, but she was finding that there wasn’t anything else she’d rather be doing, not when she had people like Finn and Poe. Hell, even Kylo was proving to not be that bad anymore. The only bad thing about the museum was the overhanging threat of Snoke and his plot to bring it down, but even that was just background noise in her thoughts those days. 

“But it would be nice to get you out of that hall,” Rey said after they stopped laughing, yawning as she spoke. The yawn brought a frown to her face, and she realized that it meant the night must’ve nearly been over if she was getting tired. “Shit, what time is it?”

Finn and Poe both shrugged, but she ignored it as she pulled her phone from her pocket, and her face fell as she realized they only had half an hour till sunrise, and she intended to follow up with Kylo on how his talk with his parents went after she finished her nightly duties. If all went well, she wanted to try and push him back toward the light from the path of darkness he’d taken so long ago during his life in another galaxy. She could only hope she was successful.

“I should get going,” she told her friends, “I’ve got to make sure everyone’s in place.”

“I need to get back in my hallway, then,” Finn muttered, pressing a kiss to Poe’s cheek before he headed back to the doors to the tablet’s hall, and left Rey and Poe alone. 

Poe stared after him wistfully, but said nothing as he walked back to his place, giving Rey’s shoulder a pat as he walked away, and she walked off to make sure everyone was where they should be. 

She tried her hardest not to lose herself in her thoughts as she walked up and down the halls of the museum’s four accessible floors, sparing the fourth floor as she waited for Kylo to finish his conversation with his parents. The only one out of place was BB-8, who was usually the last one to go back anyway. She let him into the lift, and then headed back down the third floor hall to wait for Kylo’s parents outside the stairwell.

She didn’t have to wait very long, just a few seconds after she arrived outside the doors, they opened, and a very tired, but hopeful looking Han and Leia stepped out. To her surprise, they were hand in hand as they walked away from where she didn’t doubt their son still stood in the stairwell, and she smiled kindly at them as they approached, “How did it go?”

“Ask him,” Han said in a typically cheeky tone of voice, “He’s still in there.”

Rey looked a little confused, but simply nodded and thanked him as she opened the door, and stepped inside. 

Kylo was leaning back against the wall exactly where she’d left him earlier when they’d had their conversation, his expression unreadable as he stared up at the ceiling. She got the vibe that he should probably be alone right then, and her presence wasn’t necessary, but as his eyes drifted down and met hers, she knew she couldn’t leave. 

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” he said, though there was the slightest break in his voice at the second word. His eyes were filled with sadness, though there was also a sense of relief coming off of him. His shoulders weren’t as tense as they’d been earlier. 

Rey walked up the stairs a ways until she stood above him, and he had to look up in order to see her, “I told you before, I’m the night guard, it’s my job to make sure you’re okay.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to.”

Another silence passed between them, but this one was more peaceful and content than the others. Kylo looked like he wasn’t quite as at war with himself as he was before, and she could only wonder what had been said in the stairwell in her absence. 

It was broken a few minutes later when he suddenly stiffened again in the same way he did when it was time for them all to return to their positions, “How much time do we have left?” he asked, a hint of worry in his voice. 

“Twenty minutes,” she answered him, sighing as she looked over his shoulder at the door to the stairwell, “... I’ll walk back with you.”

Kylo looked startled, and it became clear to her that he hadn’t been expecting her words. His jaw was ever so slightly slack as he stared at her, and she continued to look back at him expectantly, waiting for his response. “You don’t have to do that.”

She shook her head, “I want to,” she replied, then she turned in the direction of the stairs, and quirked an eyebrow at him. A hand reached out behind her for his, and a moment later, her heart raced in her chest as smooth leather slid into it, and Kylo began to walk beside her as she led him down the hall. 

Neither of them seemed sure of what to say as they walked down the hall, their hands gently entwined as they strolled toward the stairs. It wasn’t until they reached the base that Rey finally spoke up again, “You made your family happy tonight, you know.”

Kylo—Ben?— said nothing in response, but his hand never left hers. It occurred to her that this was uncharted territory for him. In his time at the museum, he’d barely ever taken off the mask, barely even talked to the people who had once been his family, and he had definitely not had someone hold his hand in all that time. He’d spent nearly forty years as a villain, doing Snoke’s bidding for no other reason than it being what the data from the Falcon said he’d done. There was a year’s worth missing, and she had a suspicion there was more to that final year than anyone could’ve suspected. 

“All I’m saying is you’ve come a long way in… just days, Kylo.” She looked up at him cautiously, watching his expression as they began to climb the stairs, “You could do it, you know, denounce Snoke, return to the light.”    


Kylo shook his head as they reached the top of the stairs, “If he doesn’t think I’m on his side, what will he have Hux do to the others? I can’t leave. Not now. Not without a plan.”   


“But you want to?” She asked, hope in her eyes as they walked further down the hall, the sun ever so close to rising. 

There was the briefest moment of hesitation as they approached his display, the snowy forest waiting patiently for its host’s return. The other Knights of Ren were gathered in the display next door, already in position, and likely only vaguely aware of his and Rey’s conversation. It was only after making sure that they weren’t listening in that he turned to her, and gave her an answer, “Yes,” he replied, his hand squeezing hers ever so gently. 

Rey smiled at him then, a genuine smile that she had only given to a select few people over the years, then she leaned forward, and pressed a chaste kiss to his cheek, “When I come back tomorrow night, let’s make a plan then.” 

He looked stunned as she pulled away, and she wondered if he had a heart that was beating as fast as hers was. She didn’t know what to say next, or if he would fill the silence that had suddenly fallen between them. Mercifully he was swift to fill the void, his voice bringing a relief to her she didn’t know was possible to feel, “It’s going to take more than one night to do this.”

She nodded, “I know, but I’ve got the time.” 

Before either of them could say anything else, the alarm on Rey’s phone alerting her to the fact that she had five minutes to sunrise went off, and she looked down at it in disappointment. A sigh left her lips as she realized that their time was still truly up, and contrary to what she’d just told him, they did not have enough time. 

“You should put your mask back on,” she told him, stepping away as she turned off the alarm, “The sun’s coming up.”

He looked down at the helm he placed casually on the edge of his display earlier, looking at it with murder in his eyes, like he wanted nothing more than to fling it into the sun that would freeze him in a few minutes. It was then she realized that all he’d said, all the development over the past several days had been genuine, and he was truly turned back—mentally at least. By day he’d still have to be known as Kylo Ren, leader of the Knights of Ren, Snoke’s right hand, and the Jedi Killer, but by night he could be Ben Solo again.

“Yeah,” he replied after several long seconds that they didn’t have to waste. Kylo gave her a sorrowful look as he stepped onto the platform his exhibit was placed on, and put the black mask back on his head. She winced sympathetically as it locked into place, watching him as he got back into position. 

“Tonight when I come back, I’ll come straight for you,” she promised, “We’re going to get you free.”

Kylo turned his head to look at her one last time, then the first tendrils of the sun’s earliest rays began to penetrate the window, and he turned back just as a warm, golden light illuminated his dark form. 

Rey watched with a lump in her throat that she couldn’t quite explain as the life visibly faded from him. She’d never quite watched all of the figures turn back to wax. She’d always been in the lobby of the museum again by this point, and they’d always be alive again when she returned. For the first time, she saw the way his body stiffened as the light hit it, and she could no longer sense him before her. She felt completely alone again like she had before she even started her job, and it took her longer than it should have to wrench herself away from Kylo’s exhibit and walk back down to the lobby.

As she walked, she barely noticed the wax figures of her friends, though she would think about them later. Her thoughts were stuck on that final moment with Kylo, on her lips pressed ever so briefly to his cheek, the warmth that flooded her cheeks at his parents’ teasing that they hadn’t thought she’d heard, the way her heart was pounding in her chest even then as she was walking away from him. 

  
She’d begun her time at the museum loathing him. Their first encounter he’d been a smug asshole and she’d shrugged him off like he was nothing. On their second encounter they’d fought like lions, and she’d rendered him on his back on the floor. But every encounter after that had been filled with less and less hostility from that first moment she’d gotten him to open up. They were quite possibly even friends, but she couldn’t help the direction her thoughts had taken over the course of this tenth night. Those thoughts weren’t purely platonic. 

Rey’s heart was still racing far too fast when she finally reached the lobby, and she clocked out with an odd feeling settling in her stomach, but not an unpleasant one. She found herself both dreading and eagerly anticipating the direction her evening would be taking. 

As she set out onto the streets of Georgia’s capital city, the sun’s early pink and yellow rays shining down on her face, she wondered just what she would do to free Ben Solo from the clutches of Kylo Ren. She had promised him that she would use as much of her time as she could, but how much time did they really have? How long would it take before Snoke or Hux or any of the other evil bastards Kylo Ren was associated with figured out what they were doing? They would have to move immediately and quickly, and Rey found herself almost excited for the challenge. 

She was asleep before her head hit the pillow that morning, but for once there was a smile instead of a scowl on her face as she slept, passing the time until she would begin to change the museum forever.   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ay, we have some stormpilot. Anyway, I'll have the next one out soon, I'm hype for it and already have some of it written so it should come faster than this one and the last one did. Till next time, y'all.


	4. Act Four: Nights Ten-Fifteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, sorry this took so long. I wanted to try and post this last week, but I got scheduled for six shifts in a row, and I just didn't have a break. But it's here now, and hopefully I'll get the next one out faster. I'm also thinking about splitting act five into two parts because ITS A LOT. Anyway, have at it, folks.

 

She got to work on getting Kylo away from the first order the next day. Every night after training with Luke and spending time with the resistance, she would head up to the fourth floor not to fight him, but to talk. Each night she made more and more progress, and by the end of her second week at the museum she felt confident that he would turn at any moment. 

Clocking in for her fourteenth night, Rey gave the droid sitting in front of her desk a little rub on the head as she passed it, a stupid smile on her face as she awaited the moment the sun’s last rays disappeared beneath the horizon. She flopped down gracelessly behind the desk, and stared up at the Falcon replica hanging from the ceiling. Her thoughts turned again to the pilot who had started all of this by flying the original ship into Georgia. 

A part of her wished that its pilot had survived the crash. She needed to thank whoever he was for sparing her life from taking a deep turn into a pit of nothing.  To ask him why he’d made his treacherous journey all the way out there, and what had happened in that last year. 

“What are you thinking about?” Larry asked suddenly, and she gasped in fright as she looked over to see him leaning against the door to his office. 

“You scared me,” she replied, uncrossing her legs as she stood up from her desk. 

“Sorry.” Her manager ran a hand through his hair, the gesture reminding her of something she’d started to notice Kylo did the more time she spent with him. “I was just about to leave.”

Rey shook her head, “No, don’t worry about it, I should’ve been working on locking up anyway,” she told him as she reached into her pocket for the keys, and walked back around the desk. 

Larry gave her an appreciative nod as she walked up to the doors, and began to lock them one by one. She frowned as a realization dawned on her, “What are you doing here so late, though? You’re usually gone by sundown.”

He looked for a moment like he were lost in thought. Her manager stared blankly ahead as she finished locking all of the doors except for one. A moment of silence passed between them as she waited patiently for his answer, but one never came. Instead, Larry elected to push the glasses he was wearing further up his slightly too large nose, and sighed, “I’ve already locked up the fifth floor. And the elevators.”

Disappointed that she wouldn’t be getting an answer out of him as usual, Rey crossed her arms over her chest as she walked back over to the desk, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“But sir?”

“Hmm?”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

Another sigh left him, and he walked over to the front desk, leaning against it with his left arm positioned lazily over the countertop, “The time… got away from me.” 

Once again his answer was vague and left her feeling like he was lying to her. Every night she wondered just what the museum’s original night guard had been keeping locked up in his mind. What secrets did this man have that he couldn’t reveal? What did he know about the museum that he couldn’t tell her? 

She knew she couldn’t press him about it. Not successfully at least. He had that look in his eyes again that had her knowing he wouldn’t answer a single question, and she didn’t want to risk her job trying to pry him open. 

“Oh,” she replied, then she watched him run a hand through his gray hair again, and as her thoughts returned to Kylo a blush crept up her cheeks, one she hoped was unnoticed by her manager. 

“I’ve heard you’ve made some changes to the museum’s night life,” Larry told her, mercifully not noticing the pink hue spreading on her face. 

The corners of her mouth turned up into a smile, “You’re referring to what I’ve done with Kylo Ren, aren’t you?” His nod was answer enough. “How’d you learn about it?”

“I check the cameras now and then,” he explained, but again something felt off in a way she couldn’t place. Continuing his mysterious streak, Larry tightened the knot on his tie, and gave her a nod, “Well, I should be going. The sun’s nearly gone.”

“Of course, I’ll see you tomorrow night, then?"

“Tomorrow night,” he assured her, then Larry headed for the doors, and she followed suit, locking it behind him the moment he descended the staircase. 

Once he was gone, Rey turned and headed for the desk, but as she passed BB-8, the little droid beeped to life, excitedly chirping and whirring about on his platform before he rolled down the ramp to greet her. She laughed as she bent down to scratch his head, then she gave the rest of the room a look around before she gestured for the droid to follow her to the elevator. 

As they made their way to the lifts, she heard a loud cheering and music filtering playing through the loudspeakers from the floors above. When she looked up the stairs leading to the second floor, she could already see a group of rebel soldiers running through the halls with big grins on their faces as they waved flags and jackets in the air.

If it weren’t for the fact that she’d already seen plenty of weird shit in her time at the museum, she would’ve probably questioned it more, but it didn’t really phase her until she saw Luke—it would appear that this would be another night without training from him—, Han, and Leia chasing after them. Her eyebrows furrowed together in confusion until she saw Threepio chasing after them shouting for the trio to wait for him, then she openly laughed as she pressed the up button to summon the elevator. She would be heading straight for the third floor that night. Poe owed her an explanation for what the hell was going on. 

The doors opened a moment later, and Rey and BB-8 piled on. She waited until the droid had rolled safely inside before she pressed the button that would take them to their best friend, then they stared at the display indicating what floor they were on as the elevator moved up. The droid beside her twittered excitedly the whole way, and she couldn’t help but to smile at it. 

She’d had a smile on her face the past several nights since she’d started making headway with Kylo. Even then the memories of their progress, the conversations she found herself looking forward to rather than dreading, were enough to make the corners of her mouth twitch up. Somehow, despite their extremely rocky start, they’d managed to become friends, and if Rey had her way about keeping the other thoughts she had quiet, they’d stay that way. 

When the elevator doors opened up on the third floor, Rey was pleasantly surprised to walk smack into Poe, who had a stupidly large grin on his face as he called out her name, and wrapped his arms around her. She laughed as she returned the embrace, though she was confused by the enthusiasm of the greeting. Things had settled down over the last couple of weeks at the museum, and they’d all gotten used to each other’s presence, but the excitement Poe was displaying was on a whole other level. It was even more than it had been the first few nights. She hadn’t seen him this excited since he and Finn had first started seeing one another. 

“What’s going on?” She asked as they pulled apart, eyes wandering to their surroundings for answers as the music she’d heard moments earlier filled her ears once more. 

“You don’t know?”

She shook her head, “No, I don’t.”

“It’s the official thirty eighth anniversary of our coming to life,” Poe explained, and suddenly everything started to make sense. The music, the cheers, the fact that even some stormtroopers were parading down the hall peacefully, some even dancing as they went. They were celebrating. “They put the tablet in here on the fifteenth of January, 1980, And we’ve been coming to life every night since.”

Rey looked around them in shock at the sight. She wondered how the hell she hadn’t noticed that this was coming up. She’d spent time with them every night, but for the past week… she’d been spending more time with Kylo than her friends in the Resistance.  _ Oh _ . “I didn’t even know,” she told Poe. 

He proceeded to voice her thoughts out loud, “Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you ditch your friends for the captain of the dark side,” the commander said, though his tone was light and teasing. 

“He’s not… He’s changed, Poe, he’s still changing. He’s not the Kylo Ren you know.”

“I’ll have to see it to believe it,” Poe said, then he gestured down the hall to where their friends were all gathered in their usual spot, “Why don’t you celebrate with us?”

She nodded, “I’d love to, but I can’t stay for too long, I’ve got the whole museum to look after.”

The commander looked pleased with this, and held out a hand for her as he led her down the hall toward where the general and even Finn were talking in a group of people. “Excuse me!” he cried, “Make room, I brought our night guard!”

A casual laughter erupted from the group as they made room for Rey and Poe, who slid in between Leia and Finn as they joined in the celebration, which Rey still couldn’t believe she hadn’t known was happening. The music drifting in over the loudspeakers, the way everyone was partying together… It must’ve taken some time to plan. They’d likely been working on it since before she’d joined them at the museum, and she couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed. It appeared that she once again had something to yell at Kylo about. 

A hand landed on her arm just then, and she turned around to see a maskless Kylo with a worried look in his eyes. The sight of him had her blinking her surprise, and she said his name in a confused—definitely higher pitch than normal though she’d deny it fervently if she was asked—tone of voice that nearly bordered on a squeak. 

“I need to talk to you,” he said, an urgency in his eyes she’d seen only once before when he’d first confessed an interest in the light. 

Her jaw was slack as she looked up at him, the sight of him—bare faced and all— amongst all of the Resistance was an odd one. His typical black garb stood out amongst the oranges and beiges of the people surrounding them. It was almost comical to look at, and were it not for the severity in his voice, she would’ve laughed openly—or at least managed a slight giggle. 

After taking a moment to recover from her initial shock of seeing him, she nodded, “What’s going on?”

“Not here,” he said, eyes wandering throughout the hall, then he began to walk back down it toward the staircase. 

Looking back at her friends, she promised them she’d be right back, then she turned to face Kylo only to find that he was already walking away. She watched as the eyes of the Resistance, including the general’s were all on him as he walked, and she followed him shortly after. They didn’t stop walking until they reached the end of the hall, and they disappeared behind the doors to the staircase before Kylo said another word. 

“Snoke has us investigating the tablet again,” he said as soon as she closed the door, her palm still pressed against the firm wood. 

“Isn’t that what you always do?”

He shook his head, “Not like this,” he told her, “He’s got us memorizing where everyone is, learning what time the stormtrooper leaves to rendezvous with Poe, and he wants me to learn your schedule.”

Rey thought through what he was telling her for a moment. It didn’t sound much different from what he usually did, but then again he hadn’t been participating much in the effort to get the tablet to Snoke lately. Most of his time had been spent with her figuring out a way for him to publicly come back to the light. “But you’ve been coming after the tablet for years, since before I even got here. How is this different?”

Kylo paused, a thousand ideas flashing behind his eyes as she watched him figure out what he wanted to say next, “He told us he wants to strike soon,” he said, his voice more sincere and honest than ever, “He intends to take it. If you underestimate him he will take advantage of that. He’s done it before.”

A frown developed on her face as she listened to him, and she laid a hand on his arm as she’d done so many times before, “We need to tell them,” she said, tugging lightly to pull him in the direction of the doors, but he stood his ground. 

“I can’t, Snoke will know if I’ve gone out there with you,” he explained, his expression sorrowful as he looked toward the door, the sound of music still audible on the other side, though it was muted as it had been in the lobby. Even though it was just a few feet away from them, it sounded distant, like they had somehow transported far away just by walking through some doors. “I’ve already risked enough tonight.”

“Everyone’s out there, Kylo,” she told him, “Even stormtroopers are celebrating, you’ll just blend in with the crowd.”

Going by the look on his face, he wanted to join her. He really wanted to, but she knew it would take more than that to get him to budge on the matter. “I can’t, Rey.” 

The night guard quirked an eyebrow at him, “You’ve barely left that floor in thirty eight years,” she pointed out, “And you’ve been wanting to leave Snoke, that’s what we’ve been working toward.”

“If I leave I can’t give you information anymore, I’ll be in the dark.”

“Kylo, you’re already in the dark, step out of it,” she said, taking his hand in hers, “It’s time.”

Her words seemed to strike a chord with him, and a tense moment passed as he looked down at their joined hands, then back up at her eyes. She put as much sincerity into her gaze as possible, and after a moment, she felt his fingers tighten around her palm. A grin began to blossom on both of their faces as she realized that he was saying yes, that he was going to follow her out there into the crowd. 

Together they walked back toward the doors, and Rey gently pushed them open as they walked back out into the party being thrown on the first three floors of the museum. The music filled her ears once more as they stepped back out into the light, and mercifully managed to go somewhat unnoticed as they blended in with the crowd. Occasionally, someone did give them an odd look, but neither of them paid it any mind as they made their way toward the general, who had moved on to conversing with a very familiar Wookiee. 

“General!” Rey cried out, hoping she wouldn’t have to do too much to catch the older woman’s attention. Unfortunately, the noise level in the museum that night was much louder than usual, and her voice was almost drowned out completely. She turned to Kylo, “We’ll have to get closer.”

He gave her a nod and continued to weave her way through the crowd, which seemed to be composed of just about every other inhabitants of the museum. His hand never left hers all the while, and she could feel the warmth seeping through his leather gloves, a fact which again made her curious of his—and the others’— biology as they finally reached his mother. 

“General, we need to talk to you,” Rey said as they finally approached the woman they’d nearly had to fight to reach. 

The general smiled and The Wookiee grumbled pleasantly upon seeing Kylo, both of their faces seeming to relax as he appeared in their field of vision. “What about?”

The night guard looked back at her companion, “Tell them  what you told me.”

Kylo looked at her apprehensively, then he nodded, and began to explain to his mother everything he’d just told Rey. The two of them then watched her reaction as he spoke, the delight never fully fading from her eyes even as her expression sobered. When he finished, Leia was visibly thinking through what she’d just been informed of. Her brows were furrowed in concentration as possibilities flashed before her eyes. The expression reminded her of Kylo’s a moment earlier when she’d had to convince him to come out with her in the first place, and the corners of her mouth twitched as her eyes drifted between him and the general. 

After several seconds, Leia lifted her head so her eyes could meet her son’s, “Why don’t you get back up there, then?”

“What?”

“Get back up there, find out more, make yourself useful.” The general’s own smile grew more broad on her face. Before either of them could move, however, the general rested a hand on her son’s arm, “But first, celebrate with us for a while, why don’t you? I don’t get to see you enough.”

Again Kylo looked hesitant, but after a few seconds of visibly contemplating the idea, he gave his mother a nod, and a broad grin erupted on Rey’s features. 

The music playing above them faded out from one song into the other, and an old pop song began to play over the speakers, causing her to wonder briefly just how in the hell they’d managed to pull their playlist together. She’d have to ask Poe later, when the celebrations were over and done with and the noise had died down. 

Resting a hand on Kylo’s arm, Rey’s eyes met his, “Ready to start living again?” she asked, then at his nod, they stepped out into the celebration with Leia at their side, and it felt like the music swelled with the beating of her heart as she watched him complete that final step out of the darkness and into the light. 

They spent the next several hours celebrating with the Resistance, though Kylo had a tendency to hover near the walls while Rey and the others socialized. At one point, people began to pair off into either couples or groups as they danced to the music overhead, and she offered him her hand, but he declined with a hint of a blush on his cheeks as he leaned against the wall. She gave him a soft smile as she walked over by his side, and leaned against it with him. 

Together they watched the celebration carry on around them, and while Rey certainly wanted to participate in the festivities, she didn’t want to leave Kylo sulking against the wall by himself. He may have come back to the light, but he was still not quite the social butterfly his mother and father were. Still, he watched his parents dancing with a bittersweet look in his eyes and his shoulders visibly untensed as he watched Han and Leia sway on the makeshift dance floor. 

“They look happy,” Rey said as she too watched the couple, “I was always told they did nothing but bicker.”

“That was mostly because of me,” he told her, crossing his arms over his chest, “My downfall was the source of nearly every argument they’ve ever had over the last forty years. I made them miserable.”

“Well, if that’s true, I’d say your return is what’s stopped their arguments. Everything else is in the past now.”

Kylo grumbled something she couldn’t hear, and she looked back at him to find him tensed up again. Thinking quickly, Rey reached into the pocket of her uniform pants, and pulled her phone out to see how much time they had left. It turned out that they had a little less than an hour until the sun rose, and about forty minutes until he would feel that drive to return to his place. She figured this was as good of an excuse as any for him to make his escape, “We’ve got less than an hour,” she told him, “You want to head out early?” 

A grateful hint of a smile was given to her as the knight of Ren pushed himself from the wall, “I wasn’t going to say anything,” he replied, sounding somewhat bashful as they began to walk away from the festivities together. 

They were stopped when someone clutched at Kylo’s sleeve, and upon turning around, the person was revealed to be his mother, who looked up at him with a knowing expression on her face, “Leaving so soon?”

“We only have an hour left anyway.”

“I know,” she replied, “I was just teasing. Will we see you again soon, Ben?”

For once, Rey noticed Kylo didn’t flinch at being called his former name. He was slightly tense, perhaps, but for the most part he remained unphased as he nodded, and promised his mother he’d be back again. Leia looked pleased with this, and bid them both good night as she stepped back to rejoin Han in the dance she’d interrupted to talk to their son. 

Rey watched her leave for a moment, then she cocked her head in the direction of the stairwell, “Ready to go?”

“Born ready,” he replied, then they walked back down the hallway together, neither of them saying anything until they were in the staircase, climbing back up to the fourth floor. 

The music in the background grew quiet for a moment, and until they were back on the fourth floor, all they could hear was their breathing before it picked back up again. The sound of a familiar slow, rock ballad filtered in through her ears, and Rey felt an odd tension building up in the air as she and Kylo began to walk down the hall together. She spared him a brief glance to find that he was already looking at her, and both of them looked away with a nervous laugh. 

She wasn’t sure what compelled her to ask, but the thought was in her head within the same second as she asked him, “Now that there’s no one watching, would you like to dance?” with her hand outstretched toward him.

Kylo—or was he Ben now? She found she rather liked the name his parents had given him—looked hesitantly at her hand before his own lifted to meet hers. There was a tentative pause as his hand hovered above hers, the leather of his gloves shining slightly in the lights, then his warm hand melded into hers, “I should warn you, it’s been at least forty years since the last time I danced.”

She smiled, then shrugged, “All you have to do is sway,” she told him, “That’s what I do.”

“Just give me a few minutes, maybe I’ll remember how.”

The music swelled in the distance as a familiar sounding swing song came in through the museum’s loudspeakers, and as his arm wrapped around her waist she felt her heart beating in time to it as they melted into the song. 

“How the hell did they get modern music in here?” She asked, doubtful that her partner would know the answer as their hands clasped at their sides. 

Surprisingly, he scoffed, “Ten years ago, Larry gave Poe an old iPod and access to the loudspeakers. He’s been a nuisance once a year ever since.”

“I see,” she replied as they began to waltz gently in the small hallway, mercifully out of sight from any first order members—she didn’t want to think of what would happen if Hux or Phasma were to catch them like this. The first order would then know for sure that he’d gone back to the other side, and nights would become pure hell for him. 

“You’re the first night guard who hasn’t tried to stop him,” Kylo— _ Ben _ — told her, his features softening as he no doubt remembered all the other times that the museum’s previous caretakers had tried to halt Poe in his determination to fill the halls with songs year after year. “Sebastian used to start the anniversary night guarding the door, just standing there arguing with him until Poe would find some way to distract him.”

A laugh escaped her lips as they swayed toward the end of the hall, and her partner quickly led them back down in the direction they’d come in as their conversation carried on, “But how would you know this? Haven’t you been up here all these years?”

“I sometimes came down discreetly when I could,” Ben explained, “It got boring up there, so I’d tell Snoke I was gathering intel, and I’d head down there to see what the rest of the museum did every night, and eventually to find out who the hell kept blasting strange music through the whole building once a year.”

Rey snorted lightly, though the laugh fell from her face as the song shifted to something slower, and the tempo of their dance with it. Suddenly they were moving much more slowly as they traversed the hall, and she could feel that odd tension burning between them once more. 

Soft smiles shone dimly on their faces as they continued to sway in silence for a few more seconds, and she slowly forgot about the worry of the fourth floor’s other residents catching them. She was lost in the sensation of swaying gently from side to side, in the feeling of his leather gloved fingers threading through hers as she noticed it for the first time, the look in his eyes as they bore into hers like he could see everything she was thinking. She wondered how the hell he could feel so real. In just over an hour, he’d return to wax, and all this would be just a memory. 

“How is it you know how to dance?” She asked after a while, not wanting to think about just how much time had passed. It was growing harder and harder every day to watch the sun illuminate his helmeted face, and harder still to walk away from him when it was over. The end of the night was the last thing she wanted to have on her mind, so she cast it aside for the moment, deciding to wait until the end of the night before she thought about it again. 

“My mother taught me,” he replied. 

“I’m assuming she didn’t teach you here.”

“You’d be right.”

Another short laugh passed between them, and Rey sighed, “Maybe we should do this every night,” she joked, “Perhaps you would’ve come back sooner than you did.”

Ben scoffed, “If we did that, I’d be sent so far down the dark side that Snoke would look like a ray of sunshine.”

“Not a fan of fun, are you?” The twitch on the corner of his mouth was response enough, and Rey blew him a rather childish raspberry as they continued to dance down the hall, neither of them noticing how dangerously close they were getting to the wrong end of it as the conversation trailed off, and they simply fell into a gentle sway. 

It was then that she began to notice how close they’d started to get over the course of the dance, the distance between them seeming to grow smaller as the time went on. A warmth radiated from him, making him feel so lifelike she couldn’t fathom his wax form if she tried, and as they drew closer she could feel a hint of air brush her cheeks as his breath left his lips. How was it that he wasn’t real? And yet… she could feel him,  _ see him.  _ He was real, just not in the traditional sense. 

She watched his eyes lower, knowing precisely where they were headed by the slight darkening of his irises as a blush rose to her cheeks. The tension in the air felt like a cord pulled taut between them, like it was going to break at the slightest movement, and for a moment, time stood still. 

Neither of them was sure when they stopped swaying, but by the time Rey picked up on it, she was too preoccupied by Ben’s growing proximity to her to care. Their faces were mere inches apart now, and she was noticing little details of his face she’d never taken the care to look at before. Every little freckle and crease in his skin was suddenly under the spotlight of her gaze as he drew closer; every eyelash and little fleck of gold in his eyes was suddenly the most prominent thing about him. 

As his eyes began to drift shut, she felt her heart pounding a drumbeat in her chest as it occurred to her what was about to happen. An anxiety settled over her as she worried about the inevitable kiss that was destined to follow their sweet hallway dance. It had been so long since the last time she had so much as held hands with anyone, and kissing was certainly something she hadn’t even considered since she’d left high school.

Swallowing nervously, she wondered if she’d be any good at it, but after a second she realized she didn’t care. She took in one last breath before she closed her eyes, and continued to close the gap between them as she threw her fear to the wind. 

The time had other ideas. Before they could meet in the middle, her phone’s alarm went off to let her know that she had a mere twenty minutes left before the sun came up, and she had yet to start her end of night duties. A groan left her lips as she stepped back from Ben, and turned it off. “Time’s up.”

Her eyes drifted back up to his to find a world of disappointment mixed with a hint of relief residing within them. If she were being honest she felt much the same. They both knew where that moment was heading if they hadn’t been interrupted, and she had to wonder if she was ready for it—if  _ he  _ was ready for it. 

“You still have to finish up don’t you?” He asked, his voice more soft and gentle than she’d ever heard it. 

“Yeah, I do,” she replied, then she scratched her head, “I could still walk you back to your spot if you want.”

He shook his head, “I’ll be fine.” The corners of his mouth twitched into a smile, and she knew he was telling the truth. They needed a second apart, to catch their breath, to take a breather as they processed what had nearly just happened. Their time together that night had come to a close, she’d have to wait until the next one to continue on whatever path they’d set down. 

“I’ll see you tonight, then?”

“Yeah, tonight,” Ben promised, taking her hand in his again, and giving it one last squeeze before he let it go, and headed back down the hallway toward his display to become wax once more. 

Her heart sat heavy in her chest as she watched him go, his cape swirling out behind him in a stormy sea of black as he walked. It sank further as she watched him grab his helmet off of a nearby shelf, and plant it back on his head. He looked back at her one last time as he did so, and while she tried to muster up some sort of smile for him as he left, she knew it wasn’t convincing. 

After a few more seconds, Ben was gone, and Rey stood alone in the hall with nothing but her thoughts and the displays scattered throughout the walls. Those thoughts were scattered all over the place, but two words kept running through her brain on repeat, filling her with nothing but  _ holy shit, holy shit, holy shit  _ on repeat. 

Things had definitely changed between them. It had been clear before, and it was all the more clear then. Somewhere between that first night when he wouldn’t get out of her way and that dance, a shift had occurred. The ice had thawed. She stopped feeling alone. 

As her thoughts grew more and more clouded with Ben, she leaned against a wall for support, and looked up at the ceiling. It had been so long since she’d last felt anything for anyone, she’d almost forgotten what it all felt like.. Even platonic feelings had been few and far between, and only in the last couple of weeks had she started gaining friends in numbers. 

A laugh erupted from her as she realized that all of the friends she’d made weren’t even real, even Ben was just an animated, frighteningly lifelike figure of wax. Of course the one person that she finally felt like she might belong with was someone presumably long dead. 

She shook her head as she pushed herself away from the wall, and spared the hallway Ben had just walked down one last glance before she went back down the way she came, and closed up the museum for the night. 

The next evening she came into work and for the most part, things proceeded as normal. She trained with Luke, spent some time with Finn and Poe, and talked some with the general for the first few hours. During that time she tried not to think too hard about what would happen when she inevitably went up to the fourth floor to talk to Ben. After all, he’d been regularly supplying her information about Snoke’s plans, and she wasn’t about to let him stop just because they’d nearly—

She needed to get her head straight. Throughout the night her friends had been telling her she’d been distant, and not all there. By the time she got around to conversing with the general, she was so far in her own head that Leia had to call her name three times before she finally snapped to attention. “Shit, sorry, what were you saying?”

“I was saying I’ve put Finn back on alert and sent reinforcements around the tablet,” she replied, “I don’t want to chance what my son said about Snoke being right.”

“Right, sounds perfect.”

“Are you alright, Rey? You seem… troubled.”

“I…” Physically, she was fine. More than fine. Mentally on the other hand, she was a mess, and she wasn’t sure how the hell she was going to describe her situation to the mother of the man she had feelings for, especially with things being as complicated as they were. Yet lately they’d been looking up with every day that Ben crawled closer to the light. She reasoned with herself that telling Leia what was happening couldn’t possibly be that bad, and at most it would be slightly awkward. 

“General, there’s something I need to tell you.”

She told Leia everything. Well, she told her  _ almost _ everything. She omitted how closely they’d danced and how close they’d come to sharing a kiss, but she’d kept everything else fairly truthful as she told the tale. 

The general’s face remained hard to read throughout, but as Rey’s speech came to a close, there was a hint of a smile on her face as she waited for her to finish. When she finally did, Leia crossed her arms over her chest, and exhaled, “Loving Solo men is never easy.” Her smile became much more prominent as she spoke, her voice softer than Rey had ever heard it, “They’re stubborn idiots, and they’ll drive you up a wall, but…” her gaze fell away from their conversation, and back to where Han and Chewie were standing engaged in a chortling sort of laughter with Poe, “At the end of the day, I always liked it better when we were together than when we were apart.”

Rey scoffed lightly, “What about the end of the night?” She asked, half sarcastically, “Ben and I won’t ever see daylight. No matter how hard we try.”

Traces of sorrow filled Lela’s eyes, but she quickly schooled her expression, and gave Rey a nod, “It’s more than some people get in a lifetime.”

“... I know … I just wish we would both stop running away and wasting it.”

“What the hell are you still doing here, then?”

“What do you mean?”

“Go, get up there. Tell him what you just told me,” Leia said, pointing to where Ben was no doubt leading the knights of Ren around bitterly on the fourth floor, “And don’t let him try to run.”

Rey blinked her surprise, but nodded, and stepped back from their conversation, “I’ll… I’ll be back later…” she uttered out, struggling to pay attention to where she was going as she awkwardly backed away, “But thank you, General, thank you for everything.”

The general simply gave her a nod in response, then the night guard didn’t wait to see if she would tell her anything else before she was off like a shot, rushing down the hall toward the staircase to find Ben and tell him everything. If she was lucky, maybe she’d even find out just where the events from the night before were heading before their interruption. Maybe they’d finally tell each other how they felt. 

The fourth floor was quiet when she got up there. Not that it was ever particularly loud up there, but compared with the music filtering through the loudspeakers the previous evening, the silence was deafening. She swallowed nervously as she rounded the corner leading to the main part of the floor, but still nothing was amiss. 

The few people she passed for the most part ignored her. A couple of curious glances were thrown her way, and a couple of stormtroopers gave her side eyes as she walked past, but otherwise she was allowed to walk toward Ben and the other knights of Ren in peace. Over the last two weeks, they’d all adapted to one another. The stormtroopers no longer pointed guns at her face like they had on her first night, but they were still tense around her. She suspected it was much the same with every night guard, and tried not to let it bother her. 

When she got to Ben’s display, she was disappointed and relieved at the same time to find it empty. The other knights of Ren were nowhere to be seen either when she got to their display, which she found odd but she tried not to let it worry her too much. Her nerves were already frazzled enough. 

She set about looking for him in the hallways, determined to find him before she lost her courage, but at the same time not particularly wanting to run into Hux and Phasma. Their last run in had only been stopped by another fight with Ben, and since she didn’t see him around… 

Upon another look around the hallways, she wasn’t seeing Hux and Phasma around either. All she saw was a miniature TIE as it flew past her head, and she ducked to avoid it, watching as it passed the person she’d been looking for at the end of the hall. 

Relief flooded her senses, and she found his name slipping from her lips as she approached. His real name, not the moniker he’d been given by that manipulative asshole of a supreme leader. He winced upon hearing it out loud, and looked up and down the hallway surrounding him before he approached her, speaking in a hushed tone, “You can’t call me that here, they can’t know I’m working with you. Not yet.”

She nodded swiftly in response, “You’re right, I’m sorry,” she replied, “But I need to talk to you.” 

With that, she took his hand, and led him back down the hall, completely unaware that all the while, a pair of eyes was trained on her and Ben through the visor of a stormtrooper helmet. And over the sound of their own footsteps, neither of them could hear the retreating sound of the trooper’s as he rushed off to inform his captain of what he’d seen. 

Rey walked Ben all the way back to the first part of the hallway, and as they walked past his display, he took off his helm and placed it on the edge of the wintry scenery he stood upon in his wax state each night. They then walked until they were standing adjacent—but out of hearing distance assuming they remained quiet—to the entrance to the fifth floor stairwell, only letting go of his hand when they stopped walking. She took in a deep breath, ignoring the way the cool rush of air past her gritted teeth made her shiver as she worked through what she wanted to say to him. “We… I… I want to talk to you about…”

“I wanted to talk to you, too,” he told her, looking over her shoulder as if to make sure they hadn’t been followed, “I just came from another meeting. Rey, we have days, maybe less until they make their move.”

“Shit,” she breathed, running a hand through her hair, a habit she’d picked up from him, “What are they planning to do?”

“They haven’t told us that much yet, only that they want us training harder and more often than before. The sooner we can get this done, the better. For them, at least.”

Rey sighed, then she rested a hand on his arm, “I’ll tell them as soon as I can, but first I… I wanted to talk to you about something.”

His face fell slightly, as if he could tell exactly what she intended to talk to him about. She could see the events from the previous evening flashing before his eyes as she swallowed nervously, a silence falling over them. Gathering her strength, Rey took a deep breath as she prepared what she was going to say to him in her head. 

“We’ve come a long way, you and I,” she said, feeling herself shake a little as she spoke, though mercifully her voice never waivered, “When we first met, I hated you.”

“The feeling was mutual,” he replied, though the corners of his mouth twitched upwards at the memory. 

“And yet… last night…” she felt her voice begin to waiver at long last, and she mentally cursed herself for losing strength at this crucial moment. “If we hadn’t run out of time…”

“We would’ve kissed.”

Part of her was mad that she hadn’t been able to get it out, but the other part was relieved that he’d spared her from having to conjure up the words to describe their situation. “Yeah, are you alright with that?”

He nodded, “Are you?”

“I am,” she said, exhaling her relief, then she laughed, “It’s just… odd…”

“Odd?”

They began to stroll down the hallway, making their way back down toward the staircase as they talked. “I haven’t been with anyone in a long time,” she admitted, “In any sense, I haven’t even had a friend that I truly cared about until I started this job… I’ve always been… alone.”

“So have I.”

“What about all your knights? The stormtroopers?”

“They’re not exactly experts at human connection. Until you started here, I barely talked to anyone unless it was to discuss orders. In a way, I was alone, too.”

“So neither one of us knows what we’re doing, then.”

“Guess so.”

Another silence fell over them for a moment before Ben spoke again, taking both of her hands in his, “You’re not alone.”

“Neither are you.”

Before either of them could say anything else, their blissful ignorance came crashing down on them in the form of a stormtrooper’s modulated voice crying out for them to halt. 

Rey’s blood ran cold as she jumped apart from Ben, and trained her eyes as far away from him as she could manage. The two looked between one another, trying to find some sort of conceivable excuse for why they were together, and why they had been holding each other’s hands. There was no way the troopers wouldn’t find something suspicious about the night guard talking to Kylo Ren the way she had been. 

“Shit,” Rey muttered under her breath as she stared down the blasters being pointed in their direction. “What do we do?”

“There’s nothing you can do,” one of the stormtroopers said as they began to advance on them, “We overheard your conversation in the hallway. You’re coming with us.”

“The supreme leader would like a word with you,” another trooper added, and she watched as Ben’s face paled. 

They were screwed, and Rey couldn’t help but blame herself. If she hadn’t gone up there when she did, if she’d just waited a few more minutes, Ben wouldn’t have been caught talking to her. The supreme leader wouldn’t know about their alliance or have any hint that they were plotting against him. The resistance’s spy wouldn’t have had his cover blown. Now they were staring down the barrels of admittedly harmless blasters, but there were still enough stormtroopers to take them by force. This was a battle they were destined to lose. 

“I have an idea,” Ben said quietly through his teeth, and he cocked his head to the right. 

She quickly followed his gaze to the nearby lightsaber display that had saved her ass numerous times on this job, and a grin erupted on her face. Beside her, Ben’s hand reached into the belt on his tunic, and took his own saber from its holster there. Once he had his weapon in his hand, Rey leapt the short distance to the display on the wall, and grabbed a blue bladed weapon, which she lit with gusto as she joined Ben’s side, his own humming to life shortly after. 

It was no longer a battle they were destined to lose. If Rey could defeat Ben, a couple of stormtroopers—technically six or seven—would be child’s play. At least, that’s how she hoped it would work out. She’d been wrong about the museum’s inhabitants before, but as she and Ben charged at the troopers, she was fairly certain she was right. 

While Ben and Rey began their onslaught on the troopers on the fourth floor, they remained blissfully unaware of the plot brewing on the fifth as the supreme leader sat upon his throne, listening to the fight through communication devices in the stormtrooper’s helmets. A frown appeared on his face as he listened to the fight in one ear, and in the other, he listened to the advice coming from the cloaked figure of a former emperor before him. 

“It would seem that your apprentice has failed you, supreme leader,” the emperor was telling him, “You must act quickly if our plan is to succeed.”

Snoke grunted his anger, then he looked up at Palpatine, the only other face he’d been allowed to see for forty years, and sighed, “I’m aware,” he muttered bitterly, “I’ve had a backup plan in place for the past twenty years in the case that he follows in his own footsteps.”

“It should’ve been impossible, you said that the boy wouldn’t remember what he did at the end.”

There was a pause as they thought this over. Snoke knew it was impossible for anyone other than him to recall the final year before the Falcon’s crash—he’d created the tablet after all, it was connected to his life force, not anyone else’s—but he suspected that the tablet wasn’t the cause for Kylo Ren’s turn back to the light. 

No, that was all him. It had always been difficult for him to maintain his hold over the boy he’d made his apprentice, and when he’d lost that struggle back on their home galaxy, it had been the death blow that had made him create the tablet in the first place. It had unintentionally set off the domino effect that led to him being effectively imprisoned in this museum for the last forty years.

Still, what Kylo Ren had done in just the final months before the Falcon left their home galaxy had been powerful enough that the news of his betrayal failed to surprise him. It more so disappointed the supreme leader than anything. He had hoped that the figure of Kylo wouldn’t follow in Ben Solo’s footsteps, but he’d done almost everything that his real self had done down to the tee. He’d abandoned Snoke and returned to his family already, all there was left to do was… He shook the thought from his head, not wanting to give it the time of day since he was certain that it was an impossibility. Still, it was more of an annoyance that he’d failed him than anything else.

“And yet here we stand,” Snoke replied, scratching at his chin absentmindedly with his hand as he listened to the sound of Kylo and Rey defeating his stormtroopers. “Ben Solo was always stubborn. It took me twenty three years to get a hold on his mind—”

“But only six for him to break it, yes, I know. At least this time, you managed forty.”

“Thirty eight,” the disgruntled supreme leader replied under his breath, then he shook his head, “But it doesn’t matter, we’ve had a backup plan in place for the last twenty years. We’ve always known this was a possibility.”

“I’ll send out the general immediately.”

“Not tonight,” the supreme leader replied, “We must wait, they’ll be expecting an attack no doubt. They’ll be ready for us. No, we need to wait.”

“When do you intend to strike, Supreme Leader?”

“Three more days, then we take back what’s mine,” Snoke hissed, clenching his hands into fists, then he sighed, and spoke into one of the communication devices he’d strapped to his wrist, relaying the orders to General Hux. Things were about to change at the museum, of that much he was certain. This time he would not fail, he’d get that damned tablet and finally free himself from that prison. All he had to do was wait three more agonizing days. 

Back on the fourth floor, Rey and Ben managed to knock down the last of the stormtroopers with one, well aimed, punch, and Rey clasped their hands together as they took off running down the hallway away from the weakened stormtroopers as they hobbled back to their positions. The alarm she’d set that indicated that they had twenty minutes to sunrise had gone off about ten minutes prior, and with each one of them that she and Ben defeated, they’d all started to go off into the hallways to return to their places. 

“Where are we going?” Ben asked as they ran.

“We’ve got less than ten minutes until sunrise, you’ve got to get back in your spot!” she shouted at him, then as he swore under his breath, Rey would swear she’d never laughed harder as she and Ben rounded the corner, hands still entwined as they approached his display. Her feet were aching from running around all night, but she soldiered on, eager to finish the moment they’d started before the stormtroopers rudely interrupted them. 

“Did you see their faces?” She asked Ben as they finally reached his enclosure, panting between each word. 

A soft chuckle left his lips as they came to a stop, his free hand coming up to brush a piece of hair behind her ear as he spoke, “You were brilliant, better than any Jedi I’ve ever seen. Or any sith, even.”

She smiled warmly up at him, trying to ignore the way she felt herself warm when his hand lingered on her neck when he’d successfully Tucked the stray strand behind her ear, “Well, I held my own against you well enough, figured some lousy troopers wouldn’t be anything.”

Ben’s smile reached his eyes, “I’ve probably been dead for who knows how many years now, but just now with you...” his voice faltered, and the smile faded from his lips. His confidence was quavering before her, as if he was suddenly unable to speak. Given the way he’d started that sentence, she had no trouble guessing why. 

“Just now with me... what?” She said gently, attempting to ease him back into his words. 

The hand currently locked with hers tightened its grip briefly, then he sighed, “I’ve never felt more alive.”

The words sent her heart rate spiraling out of control, beating so fast she could feel her pulse in her neck, right beneath where his hand was currently resting. She could tell he was feeling it too by the signature Solo smirk adorning his features, “I... I...” she began, unsure how to respond to his beautiful, magnificent words, until her phone did it for her.

At that moment, the alarm she’d set alerting her that she had five minutes to sunrise went off, and she groaned audibly as she hit the snooze button.  _ Not again, _ she thought as she recalled the interruption from the night before, mentally damning the stormtroopers that had fought them for halting the moment as long as they had as she found herself not wanting the night to end. 

Unfortunately, she didn’t have a choice. All around them the other museum residents were returning to their places and resuming their natural positions, blank expressions on each and every one of their faces except for the man standing before her. 

When her eyes found Ben’s again, they were filled with a mixture of hope and regret with a pinch of sorrow. She smiled weakly at him, and brought one of her hands up to his cheek, “I wish we had more time,” she told him, her voice almost a whisper as she began to move away, “I’ll see you tonight.”

She removed herself from his grip, but she took no more than two steps before she felt a hand on her wrist, twirling her back into his arms. The last thing she registered was his gloved hand cupping her jaw as his lips found hers, and her mind went into a tailspin. 

For a split second, she stood frozen, then her mind processed just what was happening, and she melted into the kiss. One hand wrapped its way around his neck and buried itself in his thick, dark hair, and the other was pressed against his chest. She felt him beneath her palms, under the tips of her fingers, on her lips. All she could do was wonder how he could not be real when he kissed her like that. 

How was he not real when there hadn’t been any other kiss that made her feel so alive? How was it that in four minutes he would return to his wax state, and she would be standing there gazing upon his frozen form? 

An overwhelming sadness filled her, and she held on tighter to Ben, pulling him as close to her as she could, not wanting to let go of what was quickly becoming her favorite moment of all time. 

They pulled away at the same time, both panting for breath as they stared into each other’s eyes, only moving far back enough so they could see each other without becoming dizzy. Rey no longer felt small under his gaze. Now they were equals, two people who had shifted the scales so they were in perfect balance, and it was all because of one, glorious night.  

After a moment, she finally tore her gaze away from him, and looked at her phone. They had two more minutes, and life had never felt more unfair. She repeated the time they had left to him, and watched the sadness in her eyes become matched with his. 

“I wish we had more time, too,” he whispered, then he reunited his lips with hers in a brief, but passionate kiss that promised more. It promised that this would not be the last time, that they would be seeing each other again, and their last kiss was a long way off. 

This time when he pulled away, he rested his forehead against hers, “I’ll see you tonight?” He asked softly. 

She gave him a hint of a smile, “Definitely,” she promised, then he kissed her forehead, and moved past her, stepping up into his enclosure in silence, grabbing his helmet from where he’d placed it an hour earlier as he went, and putting it back on his head with a mechanical hiss. 

He looked back at her once more, and with seconds to spare, he got back into position. She felt a tear spring from her eye as she watched the light from the window slowly start to illuminate him. Though the sky outside on this particular morning was overcast, the silvery lighting shining down on his face haunted her as she watched the life fade from him, and he returned to his wax state.

She stood there for several seconds watching him, just taking in all that had just happened. Only ten minutes earlier they’d run down this hallway crying with laughter. Just ten minutes and so much had changed. Rey sniffled, and wiped away her stray tear as she looked away from Ben for the first time in what felt like forever, and headed back down the hallway to clock out. Her shift would be ending in ten minutes, and she still had to check through the museum to make sure everyone else was where they should be.

Yet as sorrowful as she felt, there was an underlying feeling of pure giddiness that she still felt from the kiss just minutes prior, and as she walked down the hallways, she felt a smile developing each time she thought of it. By the time she clocked out for the day, and headed back out onto the streets, the sadness had all but left her as she breathed in the fresh— and alarmingly cold, considering it was the south— morning air.

As final as the sun rising always felt, it was never forever, and she knew that the next night and every night after that, they’d see each other again. She wasn’t sure just what it was between them yet, but she knew that it was far from over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit: the swing song they were dancing to was in my mind Sha Na Na's Those Magic Changes. Also I listened to Zayn's Dusk Till Dawn far too much while writing the end of this chapter because I realized it fit this fic far too well and it was honestly a mood.


	5. Act Five: Night Sixteen-Day One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long! I had to rewrite it a bunch of times and then I fucking decided to split it into two parts because it was just so much. The other half shouldn't take me as long, and we might go to seven chapters instead of six, but if I do that I'll upload them close to the same time, so it won't be that bad. Anyway, a lot happens in these next two chapters so sit down, buckle-up, and get ready to finish this.

The next couple of nights were the last normal ones at the museum. At least, compared to what resulted at the end they certainly could be considered that. 

On the first night, Ben was forced to hide out with the Resistance since Snoke had found out about his change of allegiance. He’d been thrown down the fourth floor stairs by a group of stormtroopers and the Knights of Ren, who had apparently given him stink eyes the whole, unfortunate tumble down. Rey had looked him over once he stumbled onto the third floor, and assured him he was fine. She wasn’t exactly an expert in healthcare for living wax people, though, so she couldn’t tell whether or not she’d actually helped him. 

Hell, she couldn’t even tell how hurt he’d been in the first place. 

The second night entailed much the same, and the most chaos they encountered was Rey slowly falling ill with some sort of awful cold. Still, she figured it couldn’t be worse than the night before. In fact, this night the first order was much quieter, which allowed Ben and Rey the perfect opportunity to talk. She brought him down to the first floor, watching as tiny x-wings and TIEs flew past them as they raced up and down the halls while they spoke.  

“So this is the Night Guard’s desk, huh?” His voice held its usual dry, sardonic tone as he looked about the room, his head tilting back as he gazed up at the gigantic Falcon replica that hung from the ceiling. 

She shook her head, “It’s not mine,” she told him, “It’s the receptionist’s by day. I just use it when I’m waiting for you,” she poked him in the center of his chest, “To wake up.”

“Hmm,” Ben sighed, watching as she swung her legs from where she sat upon the counter, “In all the years I’ve been at the museum, I’ve rarely been down here.” His eyes continued wandering about the room, pausing when they landed on the nearby glass doors. As she looked on, his jaw fell slack at the sight of the outside, which he’d likely only seen from his fourth floor window. That particular view didn’t offer much. It was covered in large part by the trees that made up the urban jungle that was Atlanta, and didn’t offer the greatest view of the world beyond the museum. 

“But other than that, I’m mostly holed up in my flat,” she continued swinging her feet, and sighed, “I actually live right by here in a little building five blocks away. It was the cheapest thing I could find, but that tiny piece of brick is home.”

Ben continued to stare longingly out the window, “What’s it like out there?”

“You’ve never seen the outside before?” She asked. 

“I have,” he replied, “I walked out there once, it was incredibly hot and humid. I decided to avoid it after that.”

A laugh escaped her lips, “I can assure you, it’s not like that now. It’s freezing out there.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it’s winter,” she replied, then she sighed, “I want to talk about what happened the other night.”

“What  _ about _ the other night?” His voice was innocent, but there was mischief in his eyes as a smirk slowly formed on his face. Was he determined to forever try to drive her insane even though they were—complicated—friends? Was this what being in an alliance with him entailed?

She reached forward and smacked his arm then, and he put on a dramatic expression of mock pain that nearly had her rolling on the floor. “You think you’re so clever, don’t you?” 

His soft smile in response stirred a warm feeling to life in her chest, and she reached out for him then, running a hand through his wavy hair as she sighed. Ben leaned forward then, and he pressed his forehead gently against hers as a sense of contentment washed over them both. “I wouldn’t mind repeating it, if that’s what you’re asking.”

A lighthearted scoff left her lips, but she didn’t protest his words as she leaned forward, and closed the remaining distance between them. The slight tension in Ben’s shoulders immediately softened as she kissed him, one of her arms wrapping around his shoulders to pull her closer. His hands planted themselves on either side of her as he supported himself on the desk, leaning further into her. 

Rey giggled softly into the kiss, then after a few seconds, she pulled away from him and gave him a content nod, “Something like that,” she said, then she swallowed nervously, “This is the first night where we’ve been able to just talk right away. No interruptions, no stalling, just… you and I and the little miniatures down the hall.”

“It’s nice.”

“Yeah.”

“We should’ve done this a while ago.”

“Between all the fighting and actual night guarding, when would we have had the time?” She asked teasingly, “Besides, we’ve got many more nights ahead of us.” She knew that in reality it wasn’t that simple, and they had a long journey ahead of them if they were to pursue whatever had grown between them, but she didn’t care. They’d wasted enough of their time already either fighting each other or getting interrupted by the sun. This night would be the one she allowed herself to just relax and enjoy with him. No interruptions, no sadness and misery. Just him, her, and the quiet of the lobby. 

Instead of voicing any concern she may have had out loud, Rey simply smiled, and began to lean forward to kiss him again, when she heard the familiar sound of the front door of the museum opening. Immediately, she and Ben broke apart, and as he moved away from her, he revealed a rather shell-shocked Larry standing in the museum door with the keys dangling in his hand. 

“Larry,” she squeaked, barely stifling a cough as she spoke, “What are you doing here?”

The man in question seemed frozen on the spot, as if he were caught doing something he shouldn’t be. Well, there was also what he’d walked in on to consider, but something about his demeanor told her he didn’t particularly care too much about her kissing Ben. “I left something here by mistake,” he explained, “I was just coming by to pick it up. Don’t… don’t let me stop you.” 

There was a sly tint to his tone as he finished speaking, and Rey’s shoulders lost their tension at the sound of it, but anxiety quickly took over as she pushed herself off of the desk. When she was on her feet, however, she suddenly felt quite dizzy, like the room was spinning—albeit rather slowly. She wobbled slightly on her feet, and not for the first time that night, she noticed that the temperature of the room felt a little bit too hot. 

“Are you okay?” Ben asked, reaching out his hands for her arms to steady her. 

She pressed a palm to her forehead, concerned when she found it was far too warm for what she considered healthy. Shit, maybe she really was coming down with something. Vaguely, she wondered just how sick days worked at the museum, seeing how she was the only night guard. Larry had mentioned once that he would take over for her when she’d nearly missed a shift, but still a part of her wondered if he actually would. 

“Yeah, fine…” Though in all honesty, she wasn’t sure. She hadn’t felt sick since she’d been sixteen. Not one sick day at school nor at work had been taken on her part for the better half of seven years. She had to be fine, and this had to be a momentary fluke. “I’ll be back in a second,” she told Ben, then she set off in the direction of Larry’s office. 

When she walked into the office, the man in question was pilfering through his desk drawers as if he were looking for something important. The moment he realized he was no longer alone, though, he froze and immediately began to shut the drawers. “Do you need something?”

“No, I just…” she paused for a moment, unsure of how to proceed given what he’d just witnessed between her and Ben. How did she explain to him what was going on? She took a second to gather her wits, then she sighed. It was probably best for both of them if she just came out with it. “I know you saw what just happened out there.”

That damned smirk appeared on his face again, and if she didn’t already know it, she would’ve missed it entirely. But it was there, and it held a glint of mischief in it as he looked up at her, making eye contact for the first time since he’d caught her rapidly pulling away from Ben, “I did,” he said, stepping around the desk so that he was sitting on it, facing her as he spoke, “When did that start?”

“Two nights ago,” she explained, “Technically three.”

A chuckle left her boss’s lips much to her surprise, but before she could voice her confusion, he sighed, “After thirty eight years…”

“Sir?”

“Rey, I’ve told you to call me Larry,” he reminded her, then he laughed again, a deep sound that almost boomed off the walls, “I just never expected to see  _ him  _ down here, much less…” he gestured vaguely, “Doing that.”

She could feel her cheeks flush as she looked down at the ground, then she let out a barely restrained cough before she spoke, “Is there some sort of,” cough, “Rule against that?”

Once again, Larry laughed lightly, though she could hear concern underlying the laugh, “No, there’s not,” he replied, then she met his gaze and he frowned, “Are you alright, Rey?”

“I’m just coming down with something,” she assured him, “I’ll make it through the night, don’t worry.”

Larry looked at her apprehensively for a moment, then he nodded, “If you still feel sick in the morning, call me, I’ll cover for you tomorrow night.”

“You don’t have to do that, si--  _ Larry. _ ” 

Her boss simply gave her a small smile, then he stood up from his desk, and began to shoo her from the room, “Now, I just came here to grab something I left behind. I’ll be out of your hair in a minute.”

Giving him one last nod, Rey bid him goodnight before taking her leave from the room, and returning back to Ben, who was now leaning against her desk with his arms crossed. “Everything alright?”

She pressed a palm against her aching head, and sighed, “Yeah, fine.” It wasn’t entirely a lie, but it wasn’t entirely the truth either. As she spared a look back in the direction of Larry’s office, she became once again aware that he was hiding something, though she couldn’t pin her finger on it. A few seconds later, he emerged from his office carrying what looked like a laptop bag slung across one shoulder. He gave her a wave as he passed her by, then a few seconds later he walked out the doors and back out into the city. 

They watched in silence as he locked the doors and disappeared into the night, and only once he was out of sight did Rey turn around and lean against the desk beside him, “There’s something odd about him,” she said, leaning her aching head on Ben’s shoulder, “He’s hiding something, I just don’t know how to ask him what.”

“He’s been hiding something for years,” Ben told her, “Ever since he first started working here. None of us have ever figured out what.”

A hint of nausea settled in her stomach just then, but she couldn’t tell if it was from what he’d said, or the illness she was no doubt coming down with. Either way, she pushed the feeling aside, but she was becoming increasingly aware that she’d likely have to ask Larry to cover for her the next evening. 

“Rey? Are you sure you’re alright?” Ben’s voice was full of concern, and shen she looked back at him, she saw those far too expressive eyes of his scanning her face up and down. He then sighed, and pulled off a glove from his left hand, exposing the pale skin underneath as her breath hitched slightly. She watched the hand shake a little as it made its way to her forehead, pressing the back of it against her skin. 

His touch felt cool, and from what she’d remembered of what little skin to skin contact she’d had with him, he always seemed to be the same temperature she was. It occurred to her then that she was definitely more sick than she’d previously thought, and she could only hope she’d make it through the rest of the night, much less the next. 

Ben interrupted her thoughts again, “You’re burning up, Rey,” he told her, his forehead touch becoming a gentle caress of the cheek as he spoke. 

“Fuck,” was the only response she could conjure, but it seemed to amuse Ben significantly as he practically guffawed. 

The laughter was quickly ceased by a well earned glare from the night guard, and as he came down from the high he pressed a kiss to her forehead, his lips a cool relief from the heat she could feel ravishing her body. She leaned into the touch, groaning her discomfort and anger at the fact that after all this time she was finally succumbing to some sort of illness. “I haven’t been sick in years.”

“Happens to all of us at some point.”

All she said in response was another groan as he pulled her into an embrace, and she melted into it as her head swam in a puddle. She had to pull herself together. She had to at least survive this night. After all, she’d promised Larry he wouldn’t have to work a night shift until at least the next evening. 

With that thought in mind, she forced herself to stand up straighter and focus, bringing herself back into one piece mentally, though she knew that by the end of the night she’d be exhausted of her strength to do so. “Here’s what we’re going to do then,” she told him, placing her hands on her hips as she stepped back from his embrace, “I’m going to leave Larry a note letting him know he’ll need to take my place tomorrow night, and then you’re going to help me get through the rest of this one.”

Ben grinned at her as he held out a hand, which she took as she guided him into Larry’s office, and began to work on her plan for the evening. 

Several hours later when the sun had risen, and all of the museum was wax again, Rey’s head was pounding worse than ever as she made her trek home, the wind whipping a cold ice through her hair as she walked. As long as she’d lived in Atlanta, she’d had yet to experience a night as cold as this one. The way the wind blew past her as she moved stole her breath from her lungs, and she ducked her head down as a particularly strong gust rushed past her. It felt colder than anything she’d ever experienced, and since she’d grown up in Phoenix, the cold was a bit of a stranger to her. 

When she finally made it back to her apartment, her first stop was to her thermostat, and she cranked the heat up somewhere just past eighty as she rubbed her hands together, trying to breathe life back into them. She quickly removed her jacket and hung it over a chair in her kitchen as she made a mad dash to her bedroom. Well, she’d say it was a mad dash, but in reality she’d never moved more sluggishly. It felt like she was moving in slow motion with all the sickness clogging her head, like she was experiencing life from the perspective of a dream.

By the time she collapsed on her bed, Rey felt so incredibly exhausted, she managed to fall asleep within seconds of hitting the mattress. She didn’t even manage to take off her shoes as sleep quickly took her in its clutches, and held her in an iron grip for the next several hours. 

She didn’t even dream that night. The slumber she encountered that night was the most dead it had ever been, but all the while a feeling of dread began to build up within her that she couldn’t explain. She felt like something awful was about to happen, but she was powerless to stop it. As she slept on through the day and well into the night, the feeling only grew worse and worse. 

While Rey slept peacefully in her bed as day turned to night, chaos was brewing in the fifth floor of the museum. The Supreme Leader and the former Emperor worked tirelessly to ensure the final steps of their plan were perfected. Every last tiny little detail had to fall into place, or all would be for naught. 

Communications were sent out to the fourth floor, but only after the traitor that was Kylo Ren descended down to the third to be with the family the night guard had reunited him with. Not that it bothered Snoke much. He’d never included Kylo as a pivotal point to his plan, not after what he’d done back in their home galaxy. He couldn’t risk being betrayed again after that. 

He waited patiently as the first few hours ticked by, waiting until everyone’s guard had fallen some and they’d settled into their usual patterns. Once he was sure the risk of a fight was minimal, all hell broke loose.

On the third floor, Ben had found his mother and father, and was hanging low in a corner with them near his stairwell. In the aftermath of what happened, Ben would find he failed to remember exactly what they were talking about. All he knew was that he heard a great  **_BANG!_ ** And he sent his parents running, with himself fast on their heels. 

“Get the tablet!” Han was shouting ahead of him, and he saw every single resistance member in sight rushing to guard the tablet hall. 

Behind them, he could hear blasters starting to fire, and the stomping of stormtrooper boots as the first order descended on the resistance floor. He spared a glance behind him to see the first wave of troopers fighting through the resistance’s officers that had unfortunately been to slow to run. Without another thought, he pulled his saber free from its holster, and ignited it as he approached the hall.

He could hear his father banging loudly on the door behind him as he prepared a defense against the people he’d fought beside for the last nearly forty years. 

As the troopers descended on the resistance, everything became a blur around him. All of it was happening too fast, and it felt like it was happening to someone else, like he was witnessing it through another person’s eyes. The troopers were quickly joined by another group, this one tailed by both Hux and Phasma, who looked something fierce as they rained hell on the third floor. 

Ben slashed his saber through the air, and at some point, he must’ve knocked down a couple of troopers, because several had fallen to the floor in a heap at his feet, but he was moving so fast he could barely remember doing it. Before he could think on it too hard, there was a cry from behind him, and he looked over his shoulder as his blade locked with someone else’s metal bladed weapon to find that there were also troopers approaching them from behind. On top of that, a slight glance to the left revealed that the cry had been Finn as he was clobbered over the head by some sort of staff. 

He heard Poe cry out as Finn fell into him, still wearing his helmet. The former trooper got back up on his feet immediately, and began firing his blaster into the crowd, though the blasts could only do so much. Seeing that Finn was okay, Ben pulled himself out of the blade lock and turned back around to find he was face to face with Hux, who was quick to throw a punch clean across his jaw.

The general appeared satisfied as Ben fell to the floor, allowing him and a good dozen or so troopers—including a very smug looking Phasma—to March over and past him into the hall containing the tablet. 

“Stop them!” Ben cried out, but it was too late. He could tell the minute they marched into the hallway the battle was lost. Everyone was too busy being overwhelmed by the sheer number of stormtroopers. Within several tenths of a second, he realized he had no other choice but to get as many people out of the museum as he could, and he cried out for the resistance to run for their lives. 

“We can’t run, Ben, we have to protect the tablet!” Poe shouted back at him as he threw a punch into the crowd of stormtroopers, which had only the effect of pissing several of them off as they shoved him back with just as much force. 

“They’re already inside! It’s a lost cause!” Ben replied, slashing his saber in an arch to buy himself a second of time, “We have to get out of here before they—“

But Ben was too late in his attempt to warn them. His sentence was cut off by an abrupt roaring sound, one that wasn’t loud, but was instead overwhelmingly silent. The battle around them suddenly came to a standstill, and those fighting on both sides slowly began to drop their weapons. Ben nearly joined them as he felt a shiver pass through him, like a jolt of electricity delivered all over his body, and suddenly he felt more alive than ever before. It was like he’d been asleep for the last near forty years, and was only just now awake. In his hand, his saber crackled and vibrates violently in his hand, like it too was experiencing that same awakening. 

Ben’s knees felt weak as the sensation passed over him, and he fell to his knees on the ground, watching as others did the same around him. With those who weren’t wearing helmets he could see bewildered expressions on their faces. Some clutched at their chests in shock, and others appeared to be screaming noiselessly. Even the stormtroopers’ fingers were scrambling to find purchase against walls as they tried to keep themselves on their feet, the feeling of something changing within them taking control of every fiber of their being. 

It felt like years went by before Ben snapped out of it, and the silent roaring faded back to a normal silence as people continued to recover from whatever mysterious force had just gripped them. Yet it wasn’t quite a mystery, he knew that much. Hux and Phasma has gotten their hands on the tablet. They’d activated the damned thing just as Snoke had been telling them to do for years, and he had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that the supreme leader would now be joining them soon. 

Looking around him, Ben quickly located his mother and father, who were still just behind him with their weapons drawn. He didn’t have to say anything for them to know they needed to leave, and just as they moved to escape, all hell broke loose once more. 

They ran down the hallway as fast as they could, and from somewhere behind him, Ben could hear Poe shouting at him to “ _ Haul ass! _ ” as he raced at the fastest speed his feet had ever carried him.

As blaster fire rained down behind them in the museum hallways, Ben cried out in pain as a white hot blast just barely clipped his shoulder, but he didn’t have time to process that the blaster fire shouldn’t have actually felt like scorching heat. No, it should have felt cool, like a whoosh of air passing him by. Yet somehow it felt like he’d wandered much too close to a fire. 

Something was wrong. Something was horribly wrong, and he supposed that was how it ought to have felt, since Snoke activating the tablet was something that the resistance had been trying to prevent for nearly forty years, but he never quite expected this. All of his senses felt like they were on fire, as if they were heightened. He could smell the smoke from where blaster fire hit walls beside him, and as he watched it hit both stormtroopers and resistance alike, he noticed they all fell to the ground with holes in their chests. And more importantly, there was crimson streaming out of those holes in ribbons. 

Ben’s face paled as he realized what was happening, and as they approached the stairwell to the floors below, he turned to his father, “We need to find the night guard.”

Back in Rey’s apartment, time felt like an illusion as it passed her both agonizingly slowly and far too quickly while she slept far into the night. By the time she woke up to a pounding knock at her door, she barely knew when or where she was. It took her longer than she cared to admit to get up and check the time, wincing when she realized it was fifteen minutes past three in the morning, and she’d slept for eighteen hours. 

“Rey!” a familiar sounding voice that she couldn’t quite place cried out from beyond her front door. Another four pound knock filled her ears, and she groaned as she swung her feet over the edge of the bed. Who the fresh hell was knocking on her door at two in the morning? Whoever they were, they were about to be a very dead someone, and she had half a mind to tell them such when she opened the door. 

The knocking was incessant, and as she approached her door, she could hear more than one voice calling out from outside. She grimaced at all the noise. Her neighbors, though she had yet to meet most of them, would be furious with her. 

Any fury she had though melted away the second she looked in through the peephole on the door, for standing outside covered in a light dusting of snow--and was that blood on his face?--was Ben, and just behind him she could see his mother and Poe. She quickly unlatched the lock on her door, and threw it open, staring up at them in shock and disbelief. A million questions flashed before her eyes, but she didn’t get a chance to ask them as Ben quickly rushed to say, “Let us in, we need you.”

“Uh… Us?” she asked, her shock still getting the best of her as Ben stepped aside to reveal at least a dozen other resistance members, and a couple of members of the Rogue One crew. Amongst the fourteen or so other people he had with him she saw his mother, Poe,—with an unconscious person who must’ve been Finn slung over his shoulder if the stormtrooper uniform was anything to go by-—Han, Jyn and Cassian, and a twittering BB-8 who didn’t hesitate to roll into her apartment. 

Each of them—except for BB-8— was covered in a mixture of snow and blood streaming from various minor gashes to their faces. Whatever had pushed them to make the trek from the museum to Rey’s apartment must’ve been one hell of a battle. That feeling of dread she’d had for the last several hours began to really sink a pit into her stomach just then, and as she moved aside to allow them access to her tiny, one bedroom apartment, she realized she already had a good idea of just what had gone down without them having to say anything.

One by one, the rag tag group of museum figures stumbled into their apartment with Ben at the lead. She felt something tug at her heart when she noticed him limping slightly into her home, shaking snow from his hair and shivering slightly as he went. As soon as he was inside, he turned around and prepared to help her welcome the others, starting with his mother. “Do you have any blankets?” he asked, “None of us were expecting it to be so cold out there.”

Rey nodded, and moved past the doorway as Poe made his way inside behind Leia, “Follow me, I’ve got a sofa over here,” she told him, leading him into her main living space as he adjusted his grip on his fallen friend, the droid beside him twittering away anxiously the whole time. Before Poe set him down though, she pulled the folded up blankets off of it, then she motioned for him to set down the stormtrooper. 

Once Finn was set down on the sofa, Rey draped one of the blankets over his body, covering him from feet to chest. She observed a rather sizable gash to the top of his head. Blood was oozing slowly from the wound, and she rushed into her bathroom to grab every washcloth and paper towel roll she could find before she returned, handing one to Poe before she walked back to the entrance of her apartment to finish welcoming the museum’s inhabitants. 

When she got back to the front, Han was the last one to walk through her door, closing it hurriedly behind him, and looking worriedly through the peephole to make sure they hadn’t been followed. Upon seeing they hadn’t, he rushed back in to be with the others, nearly pushing past Rey as he went.

The scene in her apartment had gone from complete silence to pure and utter chaos in under a minute. Yet through it all, the figures were mostly silent, only speaking to ask if someone was alright or if they were in pain. They were draped across various pieces of her furniture, or sitting on the floor brushing snow off of themselves like Jyn and Cassian. Leia and Han were examining each other’s injuries and talking in hushed tones in the corner, and Poe was still trying to rouse Finn on the sofa. All of them had a sort of stunned, blank look in their eyes that begged the question of just what had happened. 

A hand tapped her shoulder then, and she turned around to see Ben standing there with a worried sort of exhaustion in his eyes, “Do you have any medical supplies?” he asked. 

Her first thought was a solid no, but then her mind drifted to the sizable first aid kit she’d purchased when she’d first moved into her apartment and she gave him a nod. Without saying a word, she led him into the bathroom, and ducked under her sink to open the cabinet below it. Only when she got the kit out and held it firmly in both of her hands did she bother to ask, “What the hell happened? And how the hell did you figure out where I live?”

Ben sighed as they walked back out of her bathroom, through her bedroom, and back out into her living space, “Snoke happened,” he said plainly, then he looked down to where BB-8 sat at the foot of the couch, “And the droid navigated us here. He said directions to your apartment were in his systems. He won’t explain how.”

Rey set the first-aid kit down on the ground beside the sofa, telling Poe to use the gauze pads for Finn’s head before she ushered Ben into her kitchen. This didn’t offer them much more privacy than they’d had a moment earlier since she had an open kitchen, but she wasn’t too concerned with the others hearing their conversation. In fact, Han and Leia even slowly followed them into the room as well, both of them looking like they were holding something back as they walked into the kitchen behind her and Ben.

The three of them looked amongst themselves, unsure of who would start the conversation, but after a few seconds, Leia cleared her throat, “It started with this noise,” she began, “This terrible noise, then all of a sudden the doors burst open and out they came.”

“They overtook us in seconds,” Han continued, “Well, they overtook most of us. Ben managed to get a group of us together, we had to fight our way out, but if it weren’t for him...”

She looked at Ben then, though she wasn’t entirely surprised by what he’d done. He’d completely renounced the first order, and the night before he’d been hiding out at the front desk with her. Still, putting himself at risk like that for all those people… Her heart swelled with a sense of pride, but it was quickly eclipsed by another realization. 

Each and every one of the people that had just walked into her apartment had some sort of bloodstain on their skin or clothes. She’d experienced all sorts of oddities from them over the past couple of weeks, but she was fairly certain that even animated figures couldn’t bleed.

Han was the first to notice her staring, and quickly voiced his concern, “Rey?”

“You’re bleeding,” she murmured, looking to Ben, and reaching up to touch the drying cut on his forehead. He winced at the contact, but didn’t pull away. His eyes held hers with a severity she’d never felt from him before, and it was almost unsettling as the anticipation of what he’d say in response hung heavy in the air. “What happened?”

“Hux got the tablet,” Ben said, putting it bluntly, “But before we left he… I don’t know, he did something to it. He flipped the middle piece, and suddenly…” He looked down to where his lightsaber was holstered to his belt, and pulled the weapon out. His parents caught on to his intentions swiftly, and stepped back to stand near Rey as Ben ignited the weapon, though unlike the last several times she’d seen him do so, the blade hummed and cracked wildly in the air. She could feel heat radiating from the crimson saber, and suddenly she understood what had happened when Snoke stole the tablet.

“We’re… Well, I don’t know what we are, Rey,” Leia finished for her, “Whatever Snoke did to the tablet, it made us... real again, and more than that… the lightsabers and blasters? They all work. They’re real. But beyond that… some of us remember the final year.”

Rey’s eyes widened in shock. Having worked at the museum for the last couple of weeks, she thought nothing would be able to surprise her anymore, but it would seem that the world still had a few tricks up its sleeve. “You remember what happened? The missing data? The pilot of the Falcon?”

Leia shook her head, then she looked at Han and Ben, who extinguished his saber’s beam as she spoke, “Not exactly… ”

“Six months before the Falcon crashed to Earth, Ben turned back to the light,” Leia explained, while Ben and Han remained notably silent, letting her do all the talking. Over the course of the next several minutes, she explained everything in as full of detail as she could.

“ And for a while, he spied for us from within the first order. But he was caught…” She looked back at her son, who seemed to also be hearing this for the first time, if the expression on his face was anything to go by, “He barely escaped with his life, and once he was back with us, he and Han set out to find Luke. By that point the First Order was already beginning to lose the war; we just wanted to put the final nail in the coffin…”

“Where did they go?”

She glanced between Han and her son, and sighed, “I don’t know, they never told me. They didn’t want to risk getting caught, so they jumped in the Falcon and…”

Suddenly something hit her like a truck. Ben and Han had disappeared about a month before the Falcon crashed into the Earth. Neither Han nor Ben could remember what happened in the year before... Rey was reminded then of something that the youthful Han had cracked to her that first night she guarded the museum,  _ “Only a Solo would be able to fly the Falcon properly, Luke,” _ he’d said. Only, it hadn’t just been one Solo, it had been two. 

“Does this mean…?” She started to ask, only to be interrupted by Ben. 

“It’s possible, yes,” he replied, looking over at his father, “One or both of us could be the pilot. Or even Luke, if we found him.”

She leaned heavily on her countertop as she processed this, but was quickly hit with another realization, “Wait, they only found one body in the wreckage,” she said quietly. 

“What?” Ben asked.

“They only found one body,” she repeated, “And you just told me there were possibly two pilots. If there’s only one body, but two pilots… One of you might still be out there somewhere.”

They pondered this for a moment, and Rey watched each of them—mostly Ben—process that his true self might still be alive. Their expressions were all blank save for their eyes as they looked at each other worriedly. It felt like ages went by before anyone dared to break the silence that had fallen over them, “We can worry about that later,” Leia said after a while, “Right now we need to focus on getting everyone fixed up, finding the others, and getting the tablet back from Snoke. Not necessarily in that order.”

“I don’t know how much I’ll be able to do, I’ve only got a first aid kit.” Rey looked back into her living room, where the fourteen—possibly fifteen—Resistance members had set up camp for the remainder of the night. 

On the couch, Poe was still pressing gauze pads to the wound on Finn’s head, and while the bleeding seemed to have stopped, their friend still wasn’t awake. She looked back solemnly at Han, Leia, and Ben, then she walked out of her kitchen and back towards the sofa. It was time to make good on Leia’s orders of helping her people. 

“Need any help?” she asked as she approached, kneeling down in front of the sofa beside Poe. 

The commander looked stricken and mildly stunned still. He sat there just staring at his blood covered hand as he patted at Finn’s wound to the best of his ability, knowing that he had already done what he could for him. His jaw dropped open as he conjured up a response, but all that came out was a choked sort of sound before Poe collapsed against her sofa. He wasn’t crying, his expression never changed, but his exhaustion finally took its toll on his body, and he simply let himself lean back into the harsh planes of Rey’s thirft-store sofa. 

Rey reached out and took Poe’s hand, which seemed to rouse him from his stupor somewhat, and he turned his head to look at her, “When he turned the centerpiece of the tablet, I felt the change. It was subtle, but it was there.” He outstretched a hand in front of him, staring at it as if for the first time, “One second I was…” he gestured vaguely, “And the next… I came alive. I really  _ came alive.  _ And then all these memories…”

Squeezing Poe’s hand lightly, Rey sighed, “Sounds like you had a hell of a night.”

Poe scoffed, “That’s putting it lightly.” His head shook, and he closed his eyes as the memories of what had happened at the museum flooded into the forefront of his mind, “The first order took down a good quarter of us in seconds, then they took the rest captive. If it weren’t for Kylo, we wouldn’t be alive.”

“They’ve already killed people?”

“Oh yeah, they’re right back to what they were doing in our home galaxy. They didn’t even hesitate.” He looked forlornly at Finn, stroking his arm with his free hand, “They nearly killed Finn.” His voice broke on the stormtrooper’s name, and Rey quickly pulled him into a full on hug, letting him hide his face in her shoulder. 

Poe didn’t cry, but she could feel him shaking in her arms as he processed what had happened to him that night. She wrapped her arms tightly around him, pulling him against her to provide some warmth after he’d walked through the cold to get to her. 

The forecast that night had called for temperatures in the low teens with a wind chill taking those below zero, a true rarity for the southern city, but not altogether impossible. Certainly no more impossible than holding a shivering museum figure in her apartment as a result of said weather. He’d been in her home for a good ten minutes, but she could still feel the icy chill from the wind on his clothes through her own as she gently rubbed a hand up and down his back. 

Over Poe’s shoulder,  Rey looked up to find Ben looking down at her as he spoke with his parents. His eyes were sad and confused, and most of all, completely lost. Everyone else had had their mysteries solved by this latest crisis at the museum. All the others had some sense of resolution, but not Ben and his father. They were still left wondering and completely clueless as to what had happened to them. She could tell Leia was trying her best to fill in the gaps, but she couldn’t tell them what had happened in the Falcon in the end, or if one of them had made it out alive. 

They were father and son. If only one of them had survived the crash, it meant that they’d been forced to abandon the other shortly after their death to avoid discovery. She couldn’t begin to fathom the pain that either the real Ben or the real Han had endured upon realizing that the other was dead. Did the dead one of the two die upon impact, or did they have time to say their goodbyes before death’s cruel hand dealt them a fatal blow?

Rey didn’t particularly want to think about it, and she knew Ben and Han likely wanted to think about it even less. 

She pulled away from Poe with a sigh, then patted his shoulder gently, “I’m sure he’ll wake up soon,” she told him, then she reached into the nearby first aid kit, and picked out a couple of pieces to treat Ben with before walking into the kitchen. 

Ben was leaning against her counter, fiddling with the knob that turned on her sink when she approached, and his parents were speaking quietly in the corner. She reached out her free hand for his, “Come with me.”

He took the hand she had outstretched toward him, then he followed her through the small crowd in her living room until she brought him into her bedroom, ordering him to sit on her bed while she looked over the cut on his head. It was deep, but not so deep that it was still actively gushing blood and would need stitches. At least, she hoped it wouldn’t. She wasn’t sure how she’d explain Ben to a hospital. He certainly didn’t have insurance. 

After a moment, Ben pressed his fingers lightly against her wrist, “Rey, I’m fine,” he tried to tell her, but she wasn’t having any of it. 

“Nonsense, you’re bleeding.” She then took one of the antiseptic wipes from the kit, and gently began to pat down on his wound. He winced visibly at the contact, and almost pulled away from her several times, but she pressed on until she got the wound clean enough to put a bandage on it. Upon clearing up the dried blood around the wound, she noticed it had actually all but stopped bleeding, much to her relief, and was much smaller than she’d previously thought.

With a relieved sigh, Rey pressed a rather large band aid on the cut, and announced to him that he was all better. The corners of Ben’s mouth twitched upward as she sat down by his side after all was said and done, and he wrapped an arm around her waist as her head leaned on his shoulder. They were quiet for a moment after that. At least, they were until she felt Ben stir beside her, and when she looked to her left she found him staring toward her window, where the horizon outside the city was already growing gray from black. “How long do we have till sunrise?”

She shook her head, “I don’t know,” she replied, but she looked back toward her nightstand, where she’d left her phone resting when she’d gone for the door. Her phone lit up at that exact moment with a notification from some social media platform, announcing the time to be fifteen minutes until five. Already an hour had gone by since the museum’s inhabitants had arrived at her apartment, and it felt like another lifetime. “We’ve got another hour and a half till sunrise.”

“I wonder what will happen.” He looked back at her slowly, and the proximity of their faces would send her into overdrive any other time, but in that moment what he was saying trumped all else. “Cause we could be wrong about what happened to us. When the sun comes up, we could turn to dust, and all of this…” He gestured outside her bedroom door, which was left slightly ajar, “Would be for nothing.”

A scoff left her lips as she cupped one of his cheeks with her hand, “Don’t say that,” she demanded him, “When the sun rises in an hour, everything will be fine. We have to believe that. We don’t have another choice.”

He fell quiet again for another moment, allowing the hushed voices of the Resistance outside to carry into the bedroom, reminding her that for once in the years she’d had this apartment she wasn’t alone. The thought of it brought a smile to her face, but she didn’t keep it up for long as she recalled the circumstances which had brought them here. The news of all the destruction at the museum had struck a blow to them all, and there was a twinge of guilt festering in her gut at the thought of what Snoke had been able to do in her absence.

If she’d just stayed the course and at least  _ tried _ to make it to work that night, she thought maybe things would’ve turned out differently. Maybe if she’d tried harder they wouldn’t have been able to overpower the aging Larry, and everything would be as it was. “What happened to Larry in all this?”

Ben shrugged, “I don’t know.” She looked up at him to see his brow furrowed in concentration, thinking hard on the chaotic events that had taken place at the museum. “When we ran out, I didn’t see him in his office. The door was wide open. It was completely empty. So was the entire first floor. They all escaped the second Snoke started his reign of terror.”

“But the first floor’s only miniatures. Where the hell would they go?”

“That’s a good question.”

“Where did you last see him, though? He was there tonight, wasn’t he?”

He gave her a nod, “Last time I saw him he was going down to talk to someone on the second floor. I have no idea what happened to him after that.”

“Did everyone on the second floor escape, too?”

“I think most of them did. Snoke focused his assault on the third floor; he just wanted to get the tablet… and spite me for abandoning his cause.”

Rey thought about this for a moment, remembering what he’d told her about Snoke’s purpose the night they’d first engaged in combat, “You said he wanted to bring the force to this galaxy… just what does he intend to do with it exactly?”

“I don’t think that was his purpose anymore,” Ben replied, fidgeting with the leather of one glove, “Considering the fact that we seem to be alive again, I think he had an ulterior motive, one he never told us about.”   


He was right, she realized. Snoke had certainly brought the force as promised with his activation of the tablet, but the side effect that had come with it was far too immense to be a mere accident. She could feel Ben’s warmth radiating from him to her where they rested against one another, and while he’d always felt warm to her, he’d never had a heart beat like he did in that moment. She could feel it beating faintly where her rib cage pressed against his, and immediately she decided she liked that feeling. 

“I think you’re right.”

Ben’s eyes drifted down to meet hers, a sorrowful look in them that she couldn’t quite read the intent behind, “He’s got another reason for doing this. We have to figure out what it is, and stop him. Not necessarily in that order.”   


A laugh escaped Rey, then she turned where she sat, facing him as she took the hand not wrapped around her waist in hers, “And what about after that? You’ll all still be here, unless we undo what he did with the tablet.”

“I… I think that’s something we all need to decide… together,” he said, then when Rey moved to stand, he tugged on her hand, and pulled her back to him, “But not right now. We’ve…” He looked out at the door, where they could still hear the quiet voices of their friends talking amongst themselves, “We’ve had a long night.”

“That’s fair,” she told him, cupping his jaw with her free hand, then pressing her lips gingerly to his.

Ben responded warmly to the kiss, tightening his grip on her ever so slightly as he pulled her flush against him, causing heat to rise up from her chest to her cheeks as her heart rate doubled its pace. She let go of his hand, and wrapped both of her arms around his neck as she deepened the kiss.

Their first kiss had sent her mind reeling as she’d pondered how Ben could possibly turn to wax at the rising of the sun, but something about this first kiss was even more intense. With a beating heart and becoming actual flesh and blood, there was something different in the way he moved. Instead of a desperation from a constant lack of time, he kissed her slowly, softly, and she noticed he took his time with each kiss he pressed to her lips. 

Unfortunately, even when they seemed to have time, they didn’t. At that moment, the door to her bedroom was nudged open, and the two of them immediately split apart as Jyn Erso appeared in the door frame, looking between them with a glint of humor mixed with annoyance and concern in her eyes. “Oi, night guard, the stormtrooper’s awake.”

This time, Rey was on her feet immediately, and running out of her now open door behind Jyn as she rushed to Finn’s side. When she got outside, she was greeted by the sight of Poe eagerly kissing Finn, whose face was held in both of the commander’s hands as their lips met with mutual smiles on their faces. 

As Poe pulled away, they could hear him muttering something to Finn, looking out at the twelve other faces that surrounded them before turning his attention back to the wounded trooper. “Buddy, you wouldn’t believe what we’ve been through tonight.”

Finn looked around Rey’s apartment in confusion, “Where the hell am I?” His eyes landed on the Resistance members scattered amongst the room, “This isn’t the museum.”

Rey shook her head, “It’s my apartment.”

“It’s your what?”

“My apartment. The museum was attacked, Snoke got the tablet.”

“So we came here,” Poe continued for her, gripping one of Finn’s hands loosely in one of his own, “It was the only place I could think of for us to hide. Well, that and BB-8 wouldn’t shut up about it.”

“But we’ll turn to dust.”

“I don’t think we will, Finn,” Poe replied, gesturing to the blood that covered his hands in a thin, rustic layer. “Something happened.”

With Finn’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion, the group switched off and on who was explaining the situation to him. Poe spoke first, making sure Finn remembered everything up to the first order stormtroopers knocking him to the ground with cries of, “ _ Traitor! _ ” as they tried to stop them from escapingl. Then the others who had been at the museum slowly filled the rest in, and by the time they finished explaining it all, the sky outside was starting to turn gray. 

After catching Finn up, they agreed to wait until sunrise to begin plotting their attack on Snoke. Rey poured herself a cup of coffee as the sun began to make its presence known behind an overcast sky, wondering vaguely if any of the museum’s residents would be able to drink it, or if they were still somehow just figures. After all, they still didn’t have absolute proof that they wouldn’t just turn to dust when the sun rose, and they couldn’t return to the museum without Snoke butchering them. 

She sipped at the still too hot beverage cautiously, leaning against her countertop with Ben at her side as they watched the figures rest after their ordeal. Several had fallen asleep at this point, a strange sight given that they’d always been so lively and bursting with energy each night she’d spent with them. She supposed none of them knew exactly what to expect during a  _ day.  _

She and Ben eventually found themselves yawning as well, and with a quick exchange of glances, she walked into her bedroom, and grabbed them blankets as well, joining Jyn, Cassian, and another woman —whose name she vaguely remembered to be Kaydel—as they slept scattered throughout the room. They started to position themselves on the floor beside her window, when Rey got a glimpse of the outside in the dim—but increasingly brighter—light. 

The outside was covered in a sheet of snow that was an unexpected couple of inches thick. And more was still coming down against a tide of formidable winds that seemed to sweep away everything in their paths. On this ominous night, there was no one out there on the streets, not even the occasional homeless person wandering around for means of shelter. Not even a squirrel or a pigeon. The city outside was completely and utterly devoid of life; even the streetlights looked dimmer than usual. 

But all the while she could see the sky slowly getting brighter as the hour passed six in the morning, and as she finally settled on the ground beside Ben, she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep as the anxiety of what would happen when the sun finally rose settled in anew. 

She woke up twenty minutes later as the first tendrils of sunlight slowly began to peak through her window. The sky was still mostly covered by clouds, but the smallest break between them revealed the growing light of a golden sun shining through. For a moment, Rey was anxious as she watched Ben sitting beside her, noticing that he too was awake. A part of her feared that Ben was wrong, that everything she’d witnessed had been false, and when the sun rose he would crumble to dust beside her, lost forever.

But he didn’t, and the golden light filtered in on his face. The warmth of the sun washed over her, and she watched him react as he felt it hit him, too. He looked a little stunned at first, his breath hitched in his throat, but then he breathed a sigh of relief. She realized then that he too had thought the sun rising would kill him, that he had not anticipated continuing to stand by her side. 

The pink and purple sky was joined by shades of coral as the sun slowly rose over the horizon, the light reflecting off of the skyscrapers’ glass nearby in a beautiful constellation of color. Ben’s jaw was slack as he watched, and Rey’s was doing much the same as she witnessed his reaction to it all. His first sunrise in forty one years. 

“Only one sun,” Ben said after a while, a light chuckle leaving his lips, “Funny, my family makes such a big deal out of twin sunsets, I’ve never seen a single sun rise.”

Rey smiled up at him, and laced her fingers through his as they looked back out at the rising sun, “I’ve always taken them for granted,” she admitted, “They were just the start of another day, then they were the end of my time with you, and I hated them. But this one? This one’s my favorite.”

“Mine too.”

As they grinned stupidly at one another, the golden pink light was quickly returned to its silver twinged state as the sky became overcast once again, and a cloud covered the sun. Neither of them noticed the disappearance as they held each other on the ground, and even though there were other people in the room, Rey leaned up to him to press a brief, gentle kiss of excitement to his lips. 

A sarcastic reply of, “Gross,” came from Jyn in the corner a second later, though there was a smile on her face as she leaned into Cassian’s shoulder with her eyes still closed. 

“Hypocrite,” he teased her quietly in response, prompting the lightest of shoves from Jyn as Rey and Ben watched, and she found herself snickering quietly. 

“How did you two end up with this lot, though?” Rey asked, “You’re on a different floor.”

“We heard the noise,” Cassian explained, “There was a loud bang, and when we went up to investigate, this one,” he pointed to Ben, “Shoved a door into my face and screamed at us to run.” 

Rey gave Ben a look of disappointment, “You shoved a door in his face?”

The man sitting beside her shrugged, “Poe told me to haul ass, I was just obeying his command.”

“You’re so full of shit,” Rey teased, and the four of them burst into a round of laughter that hadn’t been seen the entire night since they’d stumbled into her apartment. It was a pure sound, and as the four sat huddled under blankets in the dim, grey light, she had a terrible feeling that this would be the last moment of happiness they’d experience for a while. She wasn’t sure exactly what length of time a while would be in this case, but a while nonetheless.

When they came down from their highs, though, their expressions fell blankly as they all realized what the rising of the sun meant. Day had come, and it was time to figure out just how they’d raid the museum, and commandeer the tablet from Snoke. They all looked at one another slowly, each of them taking in deep breaths as they communicated their hopes and fears soundlessly. 

Ben was the first of them to stand, offering his hand to Rey as she too stood up, facing the others with a determination not to look afraid. Jyn and Cassian were on their feet next, and as Kaydel stood they were heading out of the door, and into the living room. It was time to bring Snoke’s reign of terror to an end.


	6. Act Six: Day One-Night Twenty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long, this chapter has a lot happen in it and working it out was tough. THen once I did finish it, I got busy with Dragon Con, so I couldn't exactly focus on posting it, but it's here now, and there's only one more update after this! Thanks to everyone who's stuck around, and thanks to @CartoonJessie from The Writing Den who beta'd this for me (and to everyone from TWD who helped motivate me to write).

 

The rest of the day passed both far too slowly and much too quickly for anyone’s liking. They spent the first hour figuring out exactly who was  still trapped in the museum, and where they were trapped as best they could from the fourteen witnesses that had gathered in Rey’s apartment. 

They sat around her living room in a circle at some point, though she couldn’t tell when since she’d scarcely looked at her phone, and the overcast sky—with accompanying flurries of snow—wasn’t helping either. The faces of everyone that was in the room were all somewhat downcast, but she could see a hope in everyone’s eyes as Leia promised them that they could do this. They could take back the museum, and undo what Snoke had done. They had to. 

They began their talks figuring out what they could of the remaining history from the other galaxy. Leia mentioned that Snoke—along with many other key first order players— died in a mysterious explosion on board the Supremacy about two weeks after Ben and Han left for Luke’s island, and the Falcon was spotted making a getaway shortly after. This served only to increase everyone’s suspicions that the Skywalker-Solos were indeed the pilots of the ship, and while it made it pretty clear how the first order was brought down initially, it still didn’t explain the tablet’s purpose. It certainly didn’t help them in figuring out how to defeat Snoke now.

Things then shifted into more detail on exactly what had gone down in the attack at the museum. Over the course of the day, thanks to a few internet searches and a minute or two of turning on the news, they learned that it had been closed for the day. Supposedly it was due to a gas leak within the museum, but they all knew better. Rey wasn’t sure just who had managed to spin the story like that, but it kept the public away from it for the day, so the excuse was good enough for her. 

Still, it left a number of questions unanswered.

“So where did Larry go in all this? Wasn’t he covering for me last night?” Rey asked in confusion, realizing no one had said anything throughout the night and into the day about the mysterious night guard’s whereabouts. 

“He sent BB-8 up to our floor, then he just stayed down on the first the entire night,” Poe replied, shaking his head, “By the time we made it out to the lobby for our grand escape, he was gone. His office door was wide open, too. I think he left in a hurry.”

Ben looked up then, locking eyes with Poe, “Did anyone actually see him at all before all this shit went down?” he asked, “Or are we just assuming he was there because BB-8 said he was?”

The droid in question twittered on the floor, and the resistance commander frowned, “He’s asking if you’re seriously calling him a liar.”

  
“I know what he’s saying, Dameron, I understand droid speak just as well as you.”

More twittering and chirping occurred from BB-8, and Poe snickered at the droid before he told him to watch his language. “You’ve been hanging around Artoo, haven’t you?” BB-8 remained silent, and shook his head. 

They heard Finn sigh as he rested a hand on Poe’s arm, “Kylo’s right. Larry always used to come up and tell us where to find him if we needed him when he was the night guard.”

“But Larry’s old now, he’s not like he used to be,” Poe pointed out to them all, “And BeeBee isn’t a liar. Not to me.”

“It doesn’t matter where Larry is or was, this would’ve happened regardless of whether he was there or not,” Leia said, hanging her head in her hands as she leaned against one of Rey’s coffee tables, “All that matters is putting a stop to it before it goes any further.”

Rey scratched her head, “But where  _ does _ it go from here?”

No one seemed to have an answer. As she looked around the room, she quickly realized that even the people who were there, even those who had their memories were at a complete loss for words at what Snoke’s end game was. All they knew was that the force was now back in full, and Snoke intended to use it somehow in this galaxy… But what for?

Poe had said just hours ago when Finn was still unconscious that they’d jumped right back into doing what they’d done in their home galaxy, but she wondered just how much that had to do with their actual end game, or if it was nothing. As far as she knew, the first order had faced certain defeat forty years earlier, but no one knew exactly what had happened to Snoke. 

“Nowhere good,” Han replied after what felt like hours without anyone speaking, “But it doesn’t matter, not as much as stopping those bastards.”

The general beside him nodded, “Han’s right—don’t let it get to your head—we need to figure out where in the museum everyone is, and our plan of attack.”

Someone cleared their throat on the sofa, and Rey looked over to see Poe holding up a hand with a hint of a grin on his face, “I have an idea. It’s stupid, and it might get us all killed, but I have an idea.”

\---

The museum loomed in front of them as they walked down the street toward it several hours later. The cool steel of a lightsaber felt numbing in the night guard’s hand, but she was grateful to have the weapon. Ben had given it to her once they devised the plan, claiming to have stolen it on their way out. “It’s about time we see if you can handle one of these for real,” he told her, then he handed her the weapon, and smiled as he watched her jaw drop when she ignited it for the first time. 

Rey’s thumb twitched over the button on her saber that would ignite the blade, but she tried to hold it still as they walked slower than she suspected any of them ever had. None of them were particularly looking forward to this confrontation, but all of them knew it was a necessary evil that would save the lives of everyone left alive in the museum. 

And the rest of the galaxy, too, she supposed. 

Her other hand was occupied by Ben’s leather covered one as they walked in perfect sync with each other. Briefly, she wondered if he could feel how fast her heart was pounding through their joined hands, but if he noticed anything, he didn’t say so.

“Are you ready for this?” he asked after several seconds, his voice cutting a knife through the consistent crunching of snow beneath their boots. 

She shrugged, “As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess,” she replied, then she spared a glance his way to find that he was already looking at her. 

“You’ve been training with Luke and beating me in fights, I think you’ll be fine.” His hand squeezed hers then, and a sense of confidence surged through her, but still she was afraid. 

All those other fights had been with nonfunctional lightsabers and blasters. Now she was faced with the real thing, and the real thing was far more deadly. She could die. They all could die, or be terribly, terribly injured, and she had no way of knowing what would happen when the sixteen of them faced down the first order. Sure, they had people inside of the museum, but they had no way of knowing how many of them remained, or if they were in fighting condition whatsoever. 

The what-ifs of it all threw Rey’s head into an ache nearly on the same level with the one that had sent her home the night before last. Poe’s plan was brilliant, but phenomenally dangerous. While the fact that the element of surprise gave them a slight advantage was assuring, the fact that they were potentially outnumbered was downright ulcer inducing. 

As a wave of nausea passed over her, she gave Ben a fake smile and a nod, and clutched the lightsaber in her other hand just a tad bit more tightly. They were going to win. They had to. She just had to believe it. 

The last of the sun’s rays began to disappear beneath the horizon on her left, and she felt her heart sink with it into her stomach. It was officially go time, and their raid on the museum was mere minutes away. 

“Are you sure you want to change back after this is over?” she asked Ben suddenly, then she instantly regretted it. They’d agreed back in her apartment that it was for the best that everyone return to wax once they regained possession of the tablet. It was the least complicated, easiest option for all of them, but Rey had seen a sunrise with Ben for the first time that morning. The soft orange and pink glow lighting up his face made her yearn to see it again and again. 

Ben looked like he was having similar doubts, as if he too was remembering the way the sun felt on his face for those fleeting moments when it had bathed him in its light before the clouds had gotten in the way again. “It’s the right thing to do.” 

He didn’t look like he believed the statement, though, and she could tell as her fingers laced through his that a part of him wanted to stay like this. Whatever was going on between them was still so fresh, so new, but she suspected he knew as well as she did that they could explore it better if they had days as well as nights. She’d be happy to have him in her life in any capacity, but if she had him as something flesh and blood and real, that would make the world truly perfect. 

They were nearly upon it now, and as they came to a stop, they fanned out into a line that crossed the entire, empty street. The museum was dark on the inside; not at all like its usual lit up state. The clouds behind it were slowly beginning to part, making way for the midnight blue sky above it.  The moon had yet to rise, and the downtown location of the museum assured that the stars would not appear, and there was an eerie silence overshadowing the whole scene. 

The overall effect of it was borderline frightening, and Rey didn’t scare easy. 

A silence fell over the entire group. She couldn’t hear any of them so much as breathe or shuffle their feet. It felt like years—though it was more than likely mere seconds—before she heard Poe interrupt it with one, single word, “ _ Shit. _ ”

The group gave a collective snicker in response, then they looked amongst themselves. “Everyone ready?” Rey asked. 

Beside her, Han pulled his blaster out of its holster, “Born ready.”

Poe was quick to do the same, “Let’s go,” he said, then he paused, and glanced over at Leia. 

The general looked back at him confused, “What the hell are you staring at me for? Let’s go!”

There was a bit of awkward shuffling and muttered sorries under people’s breaths, but after a few seconds they began their march toward the museum in unison. They were in such perfect sync with each other that Rey wondered if they could read each other’s minds for a brief moment. 

That moment was quickly ended when she first set foot on the front steps of the museum. The millisecond her boot came in contact with the first rise in concrete, she heard a creaking sound, and looked up to see the doors opening, seemingly of their own accord. Every single one of the glass doors—there were three sets of two, making six—opened simultaneously, revealing a deceptively empty museum inside. 

The group froze in their tracks, and for several seconds, nobody moved. The only sound around them was that of the wind breezing past them, shifting Rey’s hair from where it rested on her shoulder. Her breathing shuddered, the mist it created in front of her sputtering out as a consequence. Not for the first time since they’d set out on this death mission, she felt raw fear coursing through her veins. 

“They know,” Poe breathed, and she could feel her heart hammering in her chest. 

“What do we do?” Finn asked in response, and Rey at long last broke her gaze from the museum, and looked over at the former stormtrooper. 

The commander beside her grinned, “There’s more than one way in.” He looked over at Leia. “General, with your permission—“

“Permission granted.” Leia’s face was a grim smile as she gave him the go ahead to take charge of their mission. 

Poe gave her a nod, then he looked at the others, “We need to retreat,” he told them, “I don’t want Snoke to see what we’re about to do.” 

Slowly, almost one at a time, the group began to back away from the museum, backing along the street running parallel to its front entrance. They ran until they were on the far side of the building next to it, then Poe gathered them all into a circle. At least, he got them into something vaguely resembling one. 

Doing one last check to make sure no one was following them, Poe sighed, and crouched slightly as he spoke in hushed tones, “There’s an emergency exit door behind Larry’s office, we’re going to have to get in through there. I’m not going to chance the ambush we’re about to face in the front.”

The others looked hesitant, but it occurred to them all rather quickly that Poe was right. There would be no entering the museum through the front. Not without a blood bath. 

“Does Snoke know about this entrance?” Rey asked just as quietly. 

Poe shook his head, “You’d have to spend time with a night guard to get them to tell you the emergency exits,” he explained, “I got to know Larry better than probably anyone over the years.” His gaze shifted from Rey to a point she couldn’t quite determine. “He told me shortly before he stepped down as the night guard.”

Finn picked at a piece of the stormtrooper helmet in his hands. “So we go in through there, then we attack as planned?” 

When Poe’s eyes fell on him next, a stupid grin slowly began to develop on his face as he gave his partner a once over. She could see the idea forming in his eyes, and the precise moment that Finn realized what he was planning. “No, no way,” Finn insisted, putting his hands up, “It won’t work.”

“What? What won’t work?” Ben asked, folding his arms over his chest beside her. 

Poe spared a glance at Han, who was giving him a strong nod of approval. “Do it, kid, it works every time.”

A scoff came from Leia’s direction. “That’s a lie.”

“It worked… enough…” Han corrected himself, and Leia looked like she was ready to argue, but Poe was already grabbing the stormtrooper helmet out of Finn’s hands, and placing it on his head. 

Once the helmet was firmly in place, Poe patted Finn on the head, and turned to face the others. “Follow my lead.”

Ten minutes later they arrived at the door leading into Larry’s office, and already they were faced with a problem. The damned thing was locked. There was some quiet bickering about how to open the door, but the problem was solved almost too easily, and far too quickly. 

Ben stepped forward from the group and raised his hand out toward the door with his eyes closed, and his brow furrowed in concentration. It didn’t take long for Rey to realize what he was trying to do, and so she held her breath in anticipation as she watched the door handle twitch in front of her. 

The air around them seemed thick with tension, and she felt a sensation akin to prickly fibers running up and down her arms as she watched Ben slowly but surely undo the lock holding the door closed. There was a snapping sound as the latch finally came undone, and a moment later—just for the hell of it—Ben used the force to wrench the door all the way open. 

They waited a second or two with bated breath as they listened for the sound of an alarm that would instantly alert Snoke and company to their presence, but none came. With that split second of relief, Poe encouraged Finn to enter the door, and watched with an unreadable expression on his face as the trooper marched inside. 

Finn gave Poe one last, forlorn—even with the helmet on—look, then he disappeared inside the museum, and began part one of their new plan. 

They waited a few more minutes, then Poe led the group inside, and Rey was right on his heels. The instant she walked back into the museum, she felt the heat from within wash over her, and she shivered as she adjusted to it. 

Once she got over the initial shock of the temperature change, she took in the sight of Larry’s office. The door leading into the main part of the museum was now closed, but the rest of it looked like it had been ransacked by half-wit thieves, and whoever did it had left in a hurry. The drawers to his desk were all flung open, papers were strewn about everywhere, and on one of the windows, there was a single, bloody handprint. She wasn’t sure whose blood it could’ve been—she hoped for his sake that it wasn’t her manager’s—but she could tell that whoever had left it behind had very large hands. 

As she pondered just what could’ve happened for the hand print to end up there, she felt a hand press into the small of her back. Upon turning around she was relieved to see that it was just Ben, who was staring down at her with a knowing look in his eyes, “We need to keep going. We don’t know how long Finn will be able to distract them.”

She nodded. “Yeah, you’re right, sorry,” she replied, then she pressed onward, moving behind Poe as he cautiously opened the door to the office. 

The commander was tense as he pulled the door knob down, his eyes on the door the entire time as his free hand brought his blaster firmly in front of him. As the door was at long last opened, Poe snapped up boltright, his blaster aimed firmly at something she couldn’t see just before she heard a cry of, “Poe! Don’t! It’s me!” From Finn. 

“ _ Fuck, _ ” Poe breathed, then she watched as he threw his arms around Finn while the others cautiously tip-toed out of the office behind him. “You scared the shit out of me.”

Finn was grinning when he took off his helmet, “I told you this was a bad idea.”

The commander pressed a brief kiss to his forehead, “But it looks like it worked?”

“It did. There were two of them across the room there.” He pointed to where BB-8’s post stood, completely empty of the droid, “I told them the Captain wanted to see them. They didn’t seem to realize that I’m not one of them.”

“Or maybe they did and we’re about to get ambushed,” Jyn said from somewhere behind them. 

There was another awkward pause, or rather, an almost pause. It was so short, it almost couldn’t even be called one, and it was more easily comparable to a sharp intake of breath before everything resumed. “We need to keep moving,” Leia instructed the group, “If we stay here, we’ll get caught.”

“She’s right, we need to find the others,” Han replied, coming out from behind the others, then he looked back at his wife, “Don’t let it get to your head.”

“I’ll be holding this over you for years.”

Rey laughed under her breath, then she sighed, “So this is where we split up, then?” she asked, nervously picking at the edge of the logo on her blazer. 

An anxious glance was spared her way by Poe, who shrugged. “Guess so…” He looked around them for a second then, and frowned. “Wait, where’s BB-8?” 

Rey hadn’t even noticed that the droid was no longer in their company, but as she looked around, she confirmed to herself that he was indeed missing. At some point during the trek from the front of the museum to the side entrance, they’d lost him. She shook her head, “We can’t worry about that now, we have to keep going. We have a battle to win.”

Poe looked like he wanted to argue with her, and he opened his mouth several times as if to argue against her, but after a moment, he seemed to realize that she was right. They didn’t have time for this. He sighed, “Is everyone ready?”

No one responded, except for a few sparse nods, then Leia sighed, and pushed past them all to head down the hall leading to the back stairwell. “See you all in hell.”

The group quickly split into their respective teams, with Han and Leia heading off down the hallways, Jyn and Cassian leading a team up the main stairwell, Finn and Poe sneaking their way through the emergency staircase, and Rey and Ben heading into the elevator. 

Rey felt her heart beating faster in her chest as they walked up to the elevator, and the sensation wasn’t helped when the elevator doors opened ahead of them. When she looked over at Ben, though, she was relieved to see him smirking, but she was still sure to smack him lightly on his upper arm. 

The second they stepped into the elevator and Ben force closed the doors shut, Rey felt the tension that had been building all day threatening to burst. Her anxiety was at an all time high, knowing the cost of losing this battle. It was potentially bad not just for the museum or the city, but for the entire galaxy if Snoke succeeded in his plans. They had to take him down that night, or not at all. 

As if he sensed her fear, she felt Ben’s hand slide into hers a second later, and his thumb ran over the back of hers. “We’ll be alright,” he assured her, but she got the feeling he was trying to persuade himself as well. 

She turned to face him with a lump forming in her throat. “Ben, if we don’t make it, I just want you to know—”

“Don’t.”

“I just want you to know,” she repeated, reaching up a hand to cup his jaw. “These were the best two weeks of my life, and I don’t regret a second of it.”

“Neither do I.” His eyes were warm as he looked at her, warmer than she’d ever seen, and she found herself wondering just how he’d ever been the man he was just three weeks ago when they first met. “But this isn’t our last night, Rey, we’ve got time. We’ve got more than enough time. Don’t thank me just yet, okay?”

“Okay.” 

“Come here,” Ben said, then he pulled her forward, and kissed her as if he didn’t believe a word he said about their possible tomorrow. 

Her arms came up to wrap around his shoulders as she kissed him, winding up on the balls of her feet, then the tips of her toes as he lifted her up into the air. She giggled softly into the kiss as the elevator came to a stop, and he set her back down on her feet. 

They slowly pulled apart from each other, and Rey found herself instantly wanting him back in her arms. If the look he was giving her was anything to go by, he was feeling much the same. She pressed her palm to his cheek for one last, lingering touch, then she let her hand drop as the doors opened onto a black hallway.

The feeling of overwhelming darkness and despair hit her the second she stepped out of the elevator. Her breathing shook as she and Ben walked out into the dark hallway together, only just resisting the urge to hold his hand as they walked. 

A hint of nausea began to grow in the pit of her stomach as they walked past the display where Vader and Palpatine had once stood. The display, now empty, carried a distinctive dark energy about it that had her feeling as if there was still someone standing there watching her. 

She was only brought back to reality by Ben’s hand brushing gently against hers when her gaze lingered too long on the display, and she gave him a worried smile as they walked past the display. They had no business here, she reminded herself, they were just there to find the snively creature that resided in the intimidating, red room at the back. 

Walking down that hallway again, Rey realized that she hadn’t been there since the day after her second night. So much had changed since then, since the last time she’d come up there had been just after she yelled at Ben’s stiff, masked figure for the offer he’d made her. A part of her wondered vaguely what would’ve happened if she’d taken him up on it. Would Snoke have succeeded in taking over the museum sooner, or would he have lost all the more quickly?

Before she could think on it too much, she heard the faint sounds of battle drifting into her ears through the floors below. The others were already in trouble, and she had half a mind to run down there and help them, but she knew they had to investigate up here first. 

Still she and Ben turned their heads toward each other with fear in their eyes, only pressing on when they heard the distinct sound of the twin black doors opening on their own--or rather, by someone using the force. It didn’t take a genius to figure out who.

“Are you ready for this?” she asked Ben, igniting the lightsaber in her hand, and assuming one of the fighting stances Luke had taught her. 

“Always,” he replied, igniting his own saber. Then they charged into the room together… Only to find that it was completely empty. Where Snoke’s figure had once sat proudly upon his giant throne at the far end of the room, there was nothing. Not even the red cloaked guards were present, which immediately set Rey’s guard flying up as she held the saber firmly in front of her. 

Their footsteps echoed painfully loudly in the empty room, and Rey walked several steps ahead of Ben as she approached the throne as if somehow by doing that Snoke would magically appear and they could defeat him. 

She should’ve known by now things would never be that easy.

Behind her Ben suddenly cried out, and she turned around just in time to see him wrapped in purple lightning being yanked out of the room by something she couldn’t see. By the time she thought to scream his name, to reach out an arm to stop him, he was out of the doors, and they were slamming shut. 

The shout of “No!” was out of her throat as she ran for the doors, slamming full force into the windowless, black steel in a vain attempt to get them open. She called out his name again, only to hear pure silence on the other side. 

Even though she already knew it was hopeless, she pressed firmly against the doors, then when that didn’t work, she tried slamming all sixty seven inches of her lithe frame into the doors as if she were a human battering ram. All that did was send pain shooting up her entire right side; her shoulder in particular took the brunt of it, causing her to scream out in pain. 

Her other palm came up to hit the door in frustration, barely even making the force-closed black mass rattle in the slightest. “ _ Ben! _ ” she shouted again, but still she couldn’t hear anything on the other side of the door. Slowly, she leaned back against it, then took several deep, heaving breaths as she thought through ways to escape this room. 

It didn’t take long for her to remember that this room had kept Snoke carefully guarded for the better part of forty years. Sure, he’d been allowed to roam the fifth floor halls as he pleased, but those were currently closed off to her. Her only exit was blocked, and now Ben was outside with only his lightsaber to defend him. 

She couldn’t do anything but pray it was enough, and with a defeated sigh, she deactivated her saber, and sank to the floor against the hardened doors. 

This couldn’t be it. All of their effort… All they’d done to try and stop this from happening… The battle she could still hear raging beneath her feet… It couldn’t end like this. She couldn’t let it end like this. She couldn’t risk never hearing Poe’s laugh again, or see Finn’s smile. Never feeling Ben’s lips pressed against hers, his arms wrapped around her waist and his voice in her ear reminding her that she wasn’t alone. Or BB-8’s excited twittering as he came off of his pedestal every night and waited for her to ferry him up to Poe on the elevator. 

This wasn’t how it was going to end. She wasn’t going to let that happen. 

With a defiant grunt, she pushed herself off of her feet, and looked around to try and find some sort of exit from the room. There had to be somewhere. A fire exit, a window, or maybe even just an air vent? She wasn’t above shimmying her way through the museum’s air ducts. After all, it had worked out for many a protagonist in many a spy movie. 

It took her far longer than she cared to admit to realize that even if the doors were forced closed, she still had a weapon handy that could take them down. She didn’t hesitate to reactivate the saber, and within seconds, she was slashing away at the door praying to whatever god or force would listen that she wasn’t too late. 

Outside of the doors was another story. 

—

Ben spat blood from his mouth as his jaw made a horrific impact with the bottom stair on the fourth floor. Though he had yet to visibly see Snoke, he knew he was there somewhere in the shadows, hidden in plain sight. All he could hear was his former master’s voice taunting him as he tossed him loosely about the halls, barely giving him the chance to process the old pain before his body came in contact with another wall. 

“You would’ve thought you’d have learned from last time,” Snoke hissed as at long last his robed form came into view at the top of the staircase. “Still… I’m not surprised…”

Ben coughed, and reached for the saber he always kept in his belt only to find that it wasn’t there. It had been flung from his hands at some point during Snoke’s initial attack, and now it rested unlit in his hands. 

He was, for lack of a better word, fucked. 

“I could say the same about you,” he replied, grunting as he began to push himself off of the floor into a standing position. “I know what happened in the last year. I know you were killed by whoever piloted the Falcon.”

Snoke was chuckling as he approached him. “But you aren’t sure who that was, are you?”

“It was me, wasn’t it?” Ben asked, beginning to backtrack out of the doors with a plan in his mind. He could make this a fair fight. All he had to do was get to the lightsaber rack at the end of the hall. 

Snoke’s voice was a hiss as he spoke. “It’s a pity you don’t remember.”

“It was worth it.”

“Was it?” His face was twisted into a mangled sneer as he backed Ben through the hallways, forcing the former knight of Ren to all but run as he moved unexpectedly fast towards him. 

He was almost there. He could practically see the rack of lightsabers around the next corner, but it was still too far out of reach. Even if he could manage to get it to him with the force, it wouldn’t get there fast enough to stop Snoke. The distance had to be just a little bit smaller. It had to be easier to reach. 

“Yeah, it was.”

Just a few more feet down the hall. He could sense it behind him, the five blades calling out to him, begging to be used in the fight that was no doubt about to go down. 

“We stopped you,” he said, his left hand opening behind him. “We saved that galaxy, and we’re going to save this one, too.”

“And how do you presume to do that?”

Now he was close enough. Without saying another word, Ben pulled one of the sabers to him and ignited the blue blade, staring fiercely at his former master. 

Snoke seemed like he was almost surprised for a few seconds, but the surprise quickly gave way to a viscous cackle. “So be it,” he replied, then he took Ben’s red saber in his hand, and raised it in front of him as he ignited it. 

—

Back on the second floor, Poe and Finn were waging war against the stormtroopers with Jyn and Cassian on their six, and they were losing. Badly. 

Splitting up into teams had been a risky idea at best, and it had fallen apart fairly quickly. Han and Leia had been almost instantly taken out by someone with a blaster in their stairwell, he’d heard their screams from his position on the second floor. Just as he’d turned to ask Finn, “What the hell was that?” A blaster shot had rang out from behind him, singeing his hair. They’d been forced into battle immediately after that, fighting against both stormtroopers and Praetorian guards from the fifth floor with only a few other people accompanying them.

Slowly, more resistance members started to trickle in to join the fight, and they eventually managed to meet up with Jyn and Cassian as well. Even some of the old Jedi managed to find them in the heat of battle, and they certainly changed things for the better, but they were still going to lose.

The troopers vastly outnumbered them, for one thing. Even with the addition of Han and Leia’s more youthful counterparts there were still three troopers for every one of them. Not even the original galactic alliance or the full force of the Jedi were stopping them. 

The resistance commander knew that by all rights that should’ve been impossible. The defeat should’ve been easy with the addition of the force using Jedi, but it was still just out of reach. 

As his fist came around to punch another trooper, he got a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye. In the heat of battle, he thought he must have imagined it. But when he got the chance to look again there was indeed a  group of figures standing at the bottom of the central stairwell, led by a pale face staring up at him from beneath a black hood with a crooked smile. 

It took him a second before recognition dawned, and he just barely dodged a well-aimed punch from another adversary. “It’s the fucking emperor! And he’s got the knights of Ren!”

“Who?!” Finn shouted back.

“Palpatine!” Jyn cried, grunting as she kicked a trooper onto his ass. “The bastard who created Darth Vader!” 

An exasperated look crossed Finn’s features. “What’s he got to do with this?” 

“Why do you think they’re so powerful?” Was Poe’s response. “They’ve got the knights of fucking Ren and the emperor backing them!”

He heard Cassian groan behind him. “Fantastic.”

“What are we going to do about it?” Finn asked.

Poe looked around again, eyes searching far and wide until he found what--or rather, who-- he was looking for. On the far side of the room, Luke and a familiar looking Jedi with a purple blade were fighting off another group of stormtroopers. As soon as he spotted them, Poe called out for Luke, telling him to take the Jedi and go after the other force users. 

He and the others he was fighting with were quick to follow suit, leaving the bulk of the resistance to deal with the stormtroopers. They charged at the knights and Palpatine, who were forced to make a hasty retreat outside of the museum’s doors into the streets beyond to avoid their rapid blaster fire. “Let’s get these bastards!” Poe cried, following them out into the city without a moment’s hesitation. 

—

Rey had been trying at the doors for a good fifteen minutes to no avail. The constant slashing at the doors with her lightsaber was doing nothing but creating burn marks on the damned things, and on top of that, it was exhausting her. 

Feeling thoroughly worn out, she leaned back against the searing hot doors, wincing only slightly as the heat simmered through her clothing, and slowly sank to the ground in defeat. Perhaps she’d been wrong. Perhaps this was exactly how it was supposed to end. 

She sighed as she stared out at the broad room, feeling thoroughly like she was trapped in that galaxy far away, and all of her friends were light years from rescue. If she closed her eyes, the humming of the museum’s various systems could sound like the subtle vibrations of a ship’s engines. She could envision that other world so clearly, as if she were right there. 

Before she could lose herself to her inner thoughts, she heard the sound of a fist banging on the door, and she sprang to her feet. “I’m here!” She returned the banging, “Let me out!”

The next noise to fill her ears was that of the lock unlatching, the snap of it sounding like music to her desperate mind. As soon as those doors opened, she rushed out of them, eager to greet the person who had freed her—hopefully, that person was Ben.

Unfortunately, she wound up face to face with a different Skywalker. When she looked up to see who it was who’d opened the doors, she looked into the black eyed mask of Darth Vader, and suddenly she wished that he hadn’t opened the doors. 

They stared at each other for a minute, the tension mounting between them as she swallowed nervously, unsure of what the former Sith Lord would do next. 

“Follow me,” a modulated, deep voice instructed her, then with a slightly dramatic swish of a cape, he began to stalk down the hall he’d come down. 

Not wanting to be left behind, Rey was quick to follow him, even as her confusion swirled around her like a hurricane. Sure. Vader has redeemed himself somewhat at the last moments of his life, but he’d also been up on the fifth floor with Snoke and Palpatine for forty years. The force only knew what that would do to a person. 

She needed to somehow ask him what his allegiance was without asking him directly, just on the off chance that he wasn’t on her side. “What’s going on down there?”

“The supreme leader is fighting my grandson,” Vader replied, sounding almost exasperated in his response, “Your friends are fighting at the entrance, they are losing rather terribly.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“I sensed it.”

Before she could ask anything else, they reached the stairs, and Vader flicked open the door to the stairwell with the tiniest of hand motions. He then motioned for her to enter with a gloved hand, and she obeyed the motion, walking down into the stairs. “What side are you fighting for?”

There was a pause behind her, and she heard Vader shift awkwardly before there was a familiar hissing sound, and when she turned to face him, he’d taken off his helm. The face beneath it was younger than she’d been expecting, and more attractive than she’d remembered seeing in pictures. Much like when Ben had first taken off his mask, though, she found herself somewhat surprised that the creators of his figure had even given him a face at all. 

“The right one,” he answered her, setting the helm down on a nearby shelf. “I didn’t get much of a chance to do it back home, I’ve got a lot to make up for.”

“But you were up there with Snoke and the emperor for forty years…”

“I was, but it doesn’t matter now. We need to get down there and end this.”

He was right, and while she still had so many questions for Ben’s grandfather, she knew they’d just have to wait until later when they got the tablet back. With that in mind she began to swiftly descend the staircase, her hand wrapped tightly around her saber as they walked out onto the fourth floor, and headed back to the other stairwell. 

“What’s going on in the battle so far?”

“The Emperor and the knights of Ren are powering the stormtroopers, the resistance is outnumbered, Ben and Snoke are in a fight to the death.”

“Where’s Hux? Or Phasma?”

“Hux? The general? I have no idea, but Phasma’s leading the stormtroopers.”

Again he used the force to open the next stairwell door, and together they walked down the steps, a silence falling over them as the sounds of the battle below grew louder and louder. 

By the time they arrived on the second floor, the battle was in full swing. The praetorian guards and the stormtroopers were united against the resistance and the members of the old rebellion, from what she could see, and just down the hall on the other side of the central staircase, Ben and Snoke were engaged in a tense battle to the death. The latter of the two was attacking the former with his own saber as she watched, and it looked like he was losing. 

As he broke away from Snoke, Ben kept his blade raised, and pointed it fiercely at his former master. His chest was heaving as the two began to circle each other, but right at that crucial moment, Ben’s eyes locked onto hers. It was the smallest split second, but Snoke seized the opportunity it gave him, and lashed out at his pupil. 

In slow motion, she watched, screaming, as Ben jumped back just a second too late, and the tip of the saber managed to pierce his abdomen. A grunt of pain left his lips as he hunched over, but he kept his position defensive and firm, not giving Snoke any more ground. 

“I’m going to help him,” Rey said, not caring if Anakin agreed with her or not. She was going to end Snoke right then and there for all the pain he’d caused Ben, for all the pain he’d caused everyone in that museum. 

To her surprise, he gave her a nod. “I’m going to go help the others. They could use it.” 

“Good luck.”

With that, he was descending the main staircase, and joining the chaos below, disappearing somewhere between a stormtrooper and a red robed guard.

Rey turned her attention back on Ben’s fight with Snoke, and prepared to raise her lightsaber into the air for the attack, when a blaster shot rang out behind her, narrowly missing her head. She ducked swiftly to avoid it, and turned around simultaneously to find herself face to face with Hux. 

The general looked cockier than ever as he approached her, looking at her with a glint in his eye she could only describe as utterly murderous. “Going somewhere?”

—

Outside of the museum, the battle still wasn’t progressing much, and that applied to both sides. It felt like they’d been fighting for hours without much shifting of the lines on the metaphorical war map. Poe felt himself growing tired for the first time in ages as he backhanded the nearest knight of Ren. It was slowly becoming more and more draining, and though it had been at least forty years since he’d last seen real battle, he couldn’t remember it ever feeling like this.

The Knight he’d hit chuckled as he recovered, “Growing tired, Dameron?”

“You wish,” Poe growled at him, charging forward so he slammed full body into the knight, knocking the two of them into the snow. 

Somewhere ahead of him, he heard Finn call his name, but he was too busy wrestling the knight to notice. His fist came down upon the Knight’s chest, not wanting to injure himself on the helm the man was wearing. 

His adversary was quick to recover, throwing Poe off of him with a jerk of his hips, which caused them to reverse their positions. The Knight’s fists came barreling down on his face, and he barely had enough time to defend himself. He braced his arms against the attack, but there was little that he could do to prevent the barrage of attacks against him from that position. 

“You won’t win! You might as well just give up!” The knight yelled at him. 

Poe scoffed. “You don’t even have a name! You don’t even know what you’re fighting for!”

Above him, the man hesitated for just the smallest fraction of a second, but before Poe could seize the opportunity that granted him, Finn barreled into the knight instead. As he looked up at his partner in awe, the former stormtrooper reached out a hand for him, and pulled him up off the snowy ground. 

Poe didn’t even bother thanking him verbally, instead he showed his gratitude by grabbing Finn’s face, and kissing him senseless. At least, he tried his best to do so in the two seconds they had before their enemy was back on his feet, and ready for battle.  

Before the knight could even lunge in their direction, though, Finn brought out a blaster from his side, and shot him clean through the chest. There wasn’t any hesitation before the knight collapsed to the ground. He didn’t even seem to realize he’d been injured before he fell, it was simply over. 

The commander looked over at Finn with a wide grin on his face, “You shoot pretty good for a stormtrooper.”

“Might be because I’m not one.”

Poe wrapped his arms around him, then he sighed as he pulled away, looking out to where the others were still battling the knights and the emperor, “Let’s finish this.”

Just as they were turning to rejoin the battle, there was a loud crash, then Poe and Finn looked up to see Ben and Snoke tumbling out of the museum’s miraculously unbroken glass doors. A small distance behind them he saw Hux and Rey chasing each other, the former of the two firing off blaster bolts while the latter swung at them as best she could with a lightsaber, occasionally ducking behind one of the columns at the front of the museum. 

Both of his friends were struggling hard against their adversaries. Beads of sweat were forming on Ben’s forehead as he fought off the supreme leader, and Rey looked like she was on the verge of collapse as she launched herself at Hux, throwing a mean right hook at his jaw. 

As the ginger-haired devil fell back on the ground, Poe grinned, and resumed his focus on rejoining the battle in front of him. His friends had this. The battle was in good hands. 

—

While Poe, Finn, Luke, and the Rogue One crew fought the knights of Ren, Ben himself was struggling to hold his own against Snoke. The wound he received to his side was crippling him, but he still considered himself lucky it hadn’t been worse. Then he would truly be screwed. 

He gave a half assed, but powerful slash in Snoke’s direction from left to right, but all this earned him was a scoff. “Pathetic, I know I trained you better than this.”

Ben didn’t acknowledge Snoke’s words, instead choosing to swing at him again, but missing him much to his disappointment. On top of that, the swing threw him off balance, and he tumbled down several of the museum’s steps before coming to a graceless stop. 

Behind him somewhere, he heard Rey call out for him, but he couldn’t respond as he struggled to his feet clutching the saber injury tightly. When he pulled his hand away, the black leather of his gloves was covered in blood, and he winced, but he didn’t acknowledge it further. He’d already shown Snoke enough weakness that night. 

“You’re barely even putting up a fight.” Snoke was descending the steps, beginning to circle him with his own red saber inching closer and closer to his face with every pass. 

“Even if I lose, you won’t win,” Ben promised him, “I don’t know what you’re planning, but you... won’t… win…”

Snoke chuckled. “When I created the tablet, all of this…” he gestured to the chaos surrounding them, “Was not my intention, but it is a delightfully unexpected consequence, a second chance to finish what I started. For the first order to rule a new galaxy without a resistance. All I’d ever meant to do was increase my power, but now… I get the chance to kill you again…”

“What do you mean?” Ben asked, pushing himself up slowly with his arms.  All he got in response from the supreme leader was another shove to the ground with the force, and in his weakened state, he found he could barely fight it anymore. He barely even felt it when Snoke force-tore his lightsaber out of his hand, and threw it violently against the pillar behind him. It hit the ground with a sickening metallic thud that made him wince slightly. 

“You know by now that you were one of the pilots, correct? Why do you think the Falcon crashed?”

Ben’s world turned upside down as the realization dawned on his face. “You caused the crash… you killed me…”

“The instant your ship docked in my hangar I had it tampered with. Couldn’t risk you flying off into victory… but I didn’t just kill you,” Snoke all but purred, then he knocked Ben to the ground, and pressed his lightsaber right up against his neck, “What did they tell you about your father?”

The wet snow began to melt into Ben’s clothes, but he found himself unable to care as what Snoke was telling him struck every chord. He’d thought that after what his mother said in Rey’s apartment that things had been cut and dry, that he, his father, and perhaps Luke had taken the Falcon out to defeat Snoke and they’d succeeded before… no… oh but it was true, wasn’t it?

Everything started to make sense. Except for one thing. There was only one body. Snoke had only successfully killed one of them. He supposed that if it was his father who survived the crash, he would’ve been dead by now anyway, but still the thought of it felt like another stab wound to his side. The pain hit him in short, sharp bursts as his breath grew short from the rage Snoke was filling him with. 

_ He did it _ , Ben thought, looking up at Snoke with what he could only imagine was complete and utter betrayal. 

The grief he felt was overwhelming. If it weren’t for Snoke’s final act of terror, he and his father could’ve gone home. He could’ve lived out the rest of his natural life in peace, free from all the conflict and pain that had haunted him since before he was even born. Perhaps he would’ve had the chance to reunite with his family properly, to spend time with them as the son they’d always deserved, but only had for so short a time before Snoke cut them apart. 

His grief was quickly transformed into an all consuming rage. A part of him was aware that Snoke was still speaking, that he was taunting him, but he didn’t care. His eyes had fallen upon his tossed aside, stolen, blue saber where it lay at the base of the nearest pillar. 

If Snoke remained distracted enough, he could reach that, even if he was weaker than he’d ever been. 

The corners of his mouth twitched into the smallest hint of a smirk, then he began to twist the saber with the tiniest twitch of his hand. 

—

At the same time, Rey was winning her battle against Hux by a landslide. His skills with the blaster and his own fists were exceptional, she’d give him that, but there was something lacking in his defensive techniques. She kept managing to be right on his heels, kept scorching his clothing with the edge of her lightsaber as she encroached on his space. 

“I’ll give you this,” the general hissed at her, landing a kick to her ribs, “You fight better than any other night Guard we’ve had.”

Rey grunted as the kick forced her back into the nearby wall, wincing when her head came in contact with the glass of a window. Mercifully though, it didn’t break, and she was quick to snap to attention, and swing her saber at Hux, knocking him off balance. 

She used this opportunity to deactivate the saber, and hit him across the side of the head with the butt of it. He cursed under his breath, and came at her again, hurdling himself into her as he pushed her full force into the wall.

White hot pain raced up and down her entire body, and she felt a bit lightheaded as he let off of her to pull away for his next strike. She felt like she saw his fist coming in slow motion, moving out of the way when he was a mere inch from her face. Hux’s fist smashed into the rough, marble wall, and he cried out in pain, calling her every foul name he seemed capable of remembering. 

Still feeling groggy from the hit she’d taken, Rey let out a warrior cry as she launched herself at him, tackling him to the ground so that she was straddling him, and drawing her saber right up against his gut, but not igniting it. 

They both froze in place at this new development, Hux letting out shaky breaths beneath her as she let her finger hover over the button that would end it all for him. “P-please,” she heard him beg, but she didn’t listen. She was too far in her own head. 

Could she do it? Could she press that button and kill a person? Take someone’s life? She could see his cold, blue eyes staring up at her, pleading for mercy that they both knew would never come. One way or another, he had lost this battle, just as he’d lost the one in his home galaxy; a fact which reminded Rey that he’d already had a life to live, and once they got the tablet back, he’d become wax again anyway. 

“You’re too late,” she told him, then she ignited the saber into his stomach, and shut it off just as quickly. Hux jerked, then he stilled beneath her, leaving her panting for a few minutes on top of him before she rolled off, and sat on her hands and knees. 

It felt like ages went by as she sat there, with her saber in one hand, and a fist full of snow in the other, just panting as she stared at the ground in shock. Her heart was racing in her chest, and she could hear her pulse echoing in her head as her eyes zeroed in on a single,  bloodstained piece of snow, wondering whether it belonged to her or the now deceased general lying beside her. 

She tried to convince herself that what she’d done was the right thing to do. That he was trying to kill her and destroy her home, and he was nothing more than a wax figure at the end of the day. None of it seemed to work, and she found herself staring at her hands thinking,  _ what have I done, _ over and over again. 

The trance she’d fallen into didn’t last long, though. Not a minute into her shock coma, she heard a loud cry from the direction Snoke and Ben had been fighting in, and she looked up to see a blue light piercing through the supreme leader’s midsection. 

It took her a second too long to realize that the light belonged to a saber, and that saber now flew right into Ben’s hands. The weapon cut clean through Snoke’s disfigured body, which fell to the ground in two disgusting pieces, his intimidating face expressionless as it found its final resting place on the ground.

Rey slowly stood up even though her whole body was still shaking from her experience with Hux, and made her way to him. “Ben!” she called out, feeling like every step she made was in slow motion as the adrenaline from the fight wore off, and gave way to the pain that she’d suffered at the general’s hands. 

Ben was breathing hard as he looked up at her, his eyes locking firmly onto hers as he pushed himself up off the ground with a grunt. His hands immediately clutched his side as he looked up at her, “Rey, are you alright?” He asked, his voice slightly raspier than normal. 

She nodded, “I’m okay.”

A groan left his lips as he began to limp toward her, “It’s not over,” he warned her, looking out into the streets where their friends were still fighting for their lives against the knights and the emperor, who still stood tall on the field of battle, streams of force lightning striking their friends whenever they got near. He was right. The battle wasn’t over. They may have taken out a few key players, but they still had one more target to hit. 

“I know.”

“We have to help them, Rey.” He groaned as his hand clutched tighter at his side, his face growing white as a sheet as he spoke. “We have to get back out there, and—“

Ben didn’t get to finish his sentence. He was interrupted by a cruel flash of blinding blue light that forced him to stagger back on his feet as it passed through his chest, and smashed into a nearby tree as his eyes widened in shock. 

By the time Rey registered what had happened, Ben had fallen to his knees. His hands were clutching at his new wound desperately as crimson turned the black fabric darker than she thought possible. 

She didn’t even think to look back and see what had brought him down, she just  _ ran _ until she got to him, time catching up to its normal speed for the first time in minutes as Ben fell completely to the ground. A loud cry of “ _ NO! _ ” Left her lips as she rushed to his side, finding that he was breathing hard and fast, gulping for air that refused to enter his lungs properly. 

Faintly, she heard him say her name, but it barely registered in her ears as she fell to her knees beside him. Her eyes swept over his dying form, assessing what had happened to him as best she could. 

There was the old blaster wound at his side from when she’d unintentionally distracted him during his fight with Snoke, which was still bleeding, but much more slowly now. A few inches to the left of that one was the new wound, which was bleeding much more profusely, and had created a small pool of dark fluid over his stomach that sent nausea flooding through her own. 

“Oh god…” Rey breathed, putting her head in her hands as she thought through what she could do for him. Until she got her hands on the tablet again and undid whatever Hux has done to it, she wouldn’t be able to help him. Her earlier dilemma about him being unable to go to a hospital popped into her head, and she felt tears spring to her eyes as she realized there was nothing she could do but watch him slowly die. 

“Rey…” he said faintly, then she looked up into his eyes to find he had weakly extended a shaking arm, and was pointing at something she couldn’t see, “Behind you.”

It was then that she remembered where the blaster strike had come from somewhere behind her, and in her distress over getting to Ben’s side, she hadn’t looked to see who had fired the shot or if they were still there. She snapped out of her fearful state in an instant, whipping around at lightning speed to face his assailant to find much to her surprise and disappointment, a bloodied Hux was standing about ten feet away holding a blaster with death in his eyes. 

Rey clenched her hands into fists as she returned his stare, standing protectively in front of Ben as if she were a metal fortress instead of a hundred or so pounds of pure human. “Don’t touch him.” Her voice was a smooth, staccato hiss as she emphasized each word, hoping she had successfully put every ounce of venom she had into the gaze she was giving Hux. 

The first order general opened his mouth to say something back to her, but then she saw his eyes flicker from her to somewhere just off to her left. His face turned white as a sheet as his blaster suddenly pointed in this new direction, a million expressions—primarily confusion and fear—crossing his face.

“Impossible,” Hux breathed, his breath misting in the freezing air as he stared at something she couldn’t see. His gaze fell between Ben’s dying form on the ground, and whatever stood ahead of him. 

Confused, Rey turned around, following his gaze until she saw what had frightened him. Her jaw fell slack as she looked upon the form of Kylo Ren, or at least, someone of the exact same height and build wearing his costume. He even wore the same mask. At his side, she noticed that BB-8 was twittering and chirping away as he rolled up to Snoke’s body, but she could barely even focus on the droid. All she could do was stare at Kylo in shock as she compared him to the man she knew at the museum.

Everything from the helm to the long, flowing robes were identical. The sole difference between the man slowly bleeding out in the snow and the man standing before them was that the latter’s clothing looked significantly more beat up, and the helm had copious amounts of scratches on it, including a small hole over one eye. In the figure’s hand, he held the hilt of a familiar cross guarded lightsaber, which had Rey’s head spinning as she looked between it and the one lying several feet away from her on the ground next to Snoke.  _ Impossible. _

But Ben and his father had more than likely been the pilots. He didn’t remember the crash and they had only found one body— _ holy shit.  _ Standing before her was the real Kylo Ren, live and in the flesh. Returning for the first time in forty one years. Rey’s breath shook as she watched the figure before her ignite his saber with a dramatic stomp, just like she’d always watched Ben do, and it wasn’t long after that he was walking swiftly toward Hux, the angry red blade raised in the air as he prepared to strike. 

“You can’t be here!” Hux cried, raising his now seemingly pathetic blaster in answer to Kylo’s frightening looking saber. 

It was then that the new Kylo spoke, his voice modulator causing Rey’s confusion to drive into a frenzy, “I assure you, I can.” The man before them then swirled the blade in his hands, and slashed across in a forward strike, narrowly missing Hux’s torso. “You can tell the supreme leader when you see him again, he failed.”

This time when Kylo struck out at Hux, the general fell back to the ground, the blood from his lightsaber injury scattering in droplets on the soft snow. The man on the ground was begging for mercy, looking up at his assailant with pleading eyes. “Don’t do this… please, Ren…”

Kylo said nothing to Hux, he simply looked down at him for a moment with his expression—his thoughts—completely unreadable behind the mask. Rey’s heart beat flooded her ears as she watched the two of them in this frozen moment of space and time, doing a will they or won’t they dance of a darker purpose. She wondered just what Kylo’s course of action would be, if he would finish what she started, or if he’d walk away and leave Hux in the snow with nothing but a threat. 

He seemed to make up his mind fairly quickly, and without another moment’s hesitation he stabbed him dead center in his chest. Like when Rey had stabbed him, he jerked and fell still, but this time there was an air of finality to it. This time he was perfectly statuesque, and there was no doubt in her mind that Kylo had done it. He’d successfully killed Hux. 

She could hear the sound of Kylo’s panting through his voice modulator, the strain of what little fighting he’d done with Hux wearing on his—god, what was he now? Sixty nine? Seventy?—aging body. A grunt left his mask as he turned to look at where she still stood tall as a human shield, unsure what to say to the man standing before her. 

Eventually, a shaky, “Thank you,” left her mouth, which remained open in a slight O shape as she stared at him. 

How in the hell had he gotten to the museum so fast? How had he known that Snoke had once again risen to power and tried to take over? He would’ve been able to go anywhere in the world in the aftermath of the Falcon’s crash, but here he was forty one years later in the field of the battle for the museum, right back where he’d started. Or perhaps… she dared to wonder… perhaps he’d always been there.

Maybe Kylo Ren had never left. 

After several second of just standing there breathing, Rey heard Ben groan on the ground, and she was instantly back at his side. “Don’t move, you’ll only make it worse,” she told him. 

“Rey, it’s not going to get better…” Ben replied, his voice more soft and quiet than she’d ever heard it. 

“No, no, you’ll be fine, I… I just have to find the tablet, then I can fix this.” She placed a hand on his cheek, then pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead, “You’ll be okay. I promise… I just… Where the hell is it?”

“Snoke has it,” Kylo said, this time his voice came from in front of her as he walked past her and Ben—with BB-8 still in tow— to where Snoke still lay in pieces on the stairs. It took her a second, but she soon caught a glimpse of a corner piece of the tablet peeking out from behind the golden folds of his robe. He’d had it with him the entire time, hidden almost in plain sight. 

Rey’s head was still spinning from the double vision she was experiencing watching Kylo bend down to retrieve the tablet from Snoke’s hands. She looked between him and Ben several times, trying to force herself to believe that the real Ben Solo was really there in front of her, and he was no longer just a piece of history. 

But Ben’s head has turned to the side, and he was now looking out at the street where their friends were still fighting for their lives against the knights of Ren. The emperor seemed to have been struck down at some point, his robed form lying limply against a fire hydrant, and two of the knights had also fallen, but upon further observation, Cassian and Finn also appeared to be down. Whether they were dead or alive she couldn’t tell. All she knew was that she had to put a stop to it, to end all of the bloodshed, and at long last finish the war that had been brought to them from across the stars. 

“Rey,” Kylo said, the voice modulator startling her as she tore her eyes away from the battlefield, “It’s time to end it.” With that, he held out the tablet to her, its flipped center piece shining in the dim light. “Let the past die.”

She hesitated before she took it from him, and resumed her position next to Ben. With her free hand, she then reached out and laid her palm flat over his chest, feeling his heart beating faintly beneath her. A gloved hand covered hers a moment later, and she glanced up to find Ben giving her a gentle, close-mouthed smile, “Do it,” he whispered, “I’m right. It’s time.”

She coughed out a strange laugh at the sound of that, feeling tears rise to her cheeks as she pressed gently on the centerpiece. Her eyes found Ben’s then, and he placed a hand over hers so that when the centerpiece was flipped onto its correct side again, they did it together. 

The tablet glowed in her hands, a golden light shining out from it as Ben gasped beside her, his body going back to that life-like wax state it was always meant to be in. She watched him stiffen beneath her, then he relaxed, closing his eyes and taking a few short breaths. 

“Ben?”

His eyes opened at the sound of her voice, then he sat up abruptly, almost knocking her  off balance as he wrapped his arms around her waist. Her name left his lips in a rush of air, and she returned his embrace, pulling him tightly against her as if she would never let go. 

Ben felt different now under her touch, but the way he held her was exactly the same as it always had been, assuring her that there had been no damage done to him once the tablet had been reset. Everything was exactly as it should’ve been, and while she felt relieved that he was alright, she felt a twinge of disappointment that any chance for them to have another sunrise together was gone. A small part of her had been looking forward to having more days together. As much fun as their nights were, she still wanted more. 

A loud cry of victory from across the street interrupted her thoughts, and she looked over Ben’s shoulder to see Poe and the others cheering as their fallen friends woke up. When she looked up at him, the commander had his arms wrapped around Finn, and had lifted him up in the air to steal a passionate kiss. BB-8 took that as his cue to rush down the stairs as best he could, and run toward the resistance commander, chirping happily the whole way. The sight of it brought a smile to her face as she buried it in the crook of Ben’s neck, relieved that at long last, they were truly safe. 

“I told you that you’d be alright.”

“I didn’t doubt you for a second.”

“Liar,” she replied as she pulled away, her eyes washing over his face, relieved to find that the color of it had returned to normal. Her gaze lingered perhaps a touch too long on his lips, which he was quick to pick up on, his mouth shifting into a smirk. 

Rey began to lean in toward him, and she closed her eyes as he moved to meet her in the middle. Before they could come together, though, a throat cleared through a voice modulator, interrupting the moment. 

When she looked up, Kylo was only a few feet away, and he was staring out at where just a few minutes ago, everyone had been engaged in a fierce battle for the tablet, “We need to get everyone inside.”

Ben nodded his agreement as he looked up at his true self, “I’m— _ he’s _ right,” he replied, looking back at Rey, “How much time do we have until sunrise?”

She reached around into the pocket of her jacket, wondering how in the hell the little device had managed to stay with her through all the chaos of the fight. The time onscreen revealed that they had just one more hour until the sun went up, and everyone resumed their frozen state. With a sigh, she relayed the time that they had left to Ben and… well, Ben, and slowly pushed herself into a standing position. 

The Night Guard offered out a hand to Ben, waiting until he took it before she helped pull him up, “Let’s get to work,” she said, but before she moved off of the steps to start gathering the museum’s inhabitants, she looked back at Kylo, “When we’re done, I need to talk to you.”

Kylo gave her a nod, then the three of them began to walk out onto the battlefield together. The fight for the museum was over, and all that was left to do was to punish those responsible for the insurrection. 

It took them a good ten minutes to get everyone out of the museum inside of it. Well, everyone except for Snoke, who still lay in two pieces where Ben had utterly destroyed him. Despite all of the supreme leader’s pleading, nothing could quite convince Rey that bringing him back inside was a good idea. Hell, she couldn’t even be convinced that having Snoke in the museum ever again was a good idea. 

Hux was allowed back inside on the basis that he’d be kept under close guard, and so would the chrome-captain Phasma. Each night from then on the two of them—as well as the knights of Ren—were to have at least three people guarding them from sunset to sunrise. There would be no ending to this rule, they couldn’t risk another rebellion—which Rey found ironic, given who had started it. 

The older versions of Han and Leia were found embracing at the fact that they were alive in the staircase. Both of them had been on the verge of tears when they saw Ben again, wrapping their arms around him as well. Rey had left them alone for a moment, not wanting to intrude on an intimate scene, but they were running out of time, and Ben was helping her get people back in place. They’d left his parents in somewhat of a hurry, then they’d rejoined the others.

As the minutes passed, Kylo remained for the most part silent, only speaking when he had to instruct someone on where to go. She watched him out of the corner of her eye, fascinated by the man who had actually been the Falcon’s pilot, and longing for the chance to ask him all of the questions that had been plaguing her since she’d first started working at the museum. 

But first, she had to close up for the night. 

With twenty minutes until the sun came up again, she and Ben walked up the stairs together to his spot on the fourth floor with their fingers laced tightly together. She’d made the real Kylo Ren wait at the bottom of the stairwell for her, hoping he wouldn’t leave before she got the opportunity to talk to him about everything. To tie up the loose ends. 

“I don’t think you belong here anymore,” she told Ben as they walked. “This floor’s for villains. The first order. That’s not you.”

Ben hummed, but whether it was assent or disapproval she couldn’t tell. He stayed relatively quiet the entire walk back to his spot. By the time they reached the snowy scenery, she could tell something was wrong. 

“Ben?”

“Hmm?”

“What’s wrong?”

A sigh left his lips, and he shook his head. “Something Snoke told me…”

“What?”

“My father and I were the pilots. He confirmed it, and that didn’t surprise me, but…” Ben paused a moment, his grip on her hand tightening slightly as he gathered his thoughts. “Rey, he caused the Falcon to crash. He messed with it while we were infiltrating his ship, and… We killed him, but… It was too late.”

A lump formed in Rey’s throat, and she quickly wrapped her arms around Ben. holding him closely as she processed what he was telling her. The crash hadn’t just been an accident, it had been murder. And since they now knew Kylo had survived, that meant Han hadn’t. “Ben, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” He pressed a gentle kiss to the side of her head, then returned the embrace, allowing her warmth to pass between them both. 

They stayed like that for a few minutes, just holding each other in the hallway. Neither of them spoke, except to whisper the occasional gratitude that they were alive, and they had won. Rey wasn’t sure exactly how much time they had left, but she knew it was growing smaller and smaller by the second, and she dreaded the minute the sun’s golden rays filtered in through the nearest window. 

“Rey?”

“Yeah?”

“Will you stay with me until the sun comes up?”

She pulled back slightly, looking him in the eyes as she responded with “Always,” before she pressed her head against his chest once more. 

Twenty minutes later when the sun had risen and Ben was once again a mere figure, Rey walked slowly back down to the lobby, both dreading and eagerly anticipating the conversation with Kylo. The stairs had never seemed smaller, and the hallways had never been shorter as she made her descent. She swallowed nervously as at long last she came upon the main stairwell leading down into the lobby, finding Kylo waiting behind the desk with his back to her. 

“You stayed.” It was only two words, but her voice trembled on them both.

He turned to face her, and she wished he weren’t wearing that mask so she could see his face, see what he was thinking. His expression was unfortunately unreadable behind that mask, but his entire body was tense, indicating that he too had been dreading this encounter in some capacity. Still, it stuck out to her that he’d stayed despite his fear, instead of running off into the night like she knew he so desperately wanted. 

“I did,” he replied, stepping away from the desk. 

There was a pause, then she took a deep breath, and began to descend the final staircase, “So you were the pilot… And your father…”

Kylo nodded, “We weren’t the only ones,” he replied, then he looked back at the front of the museum to where BB-8 had rolled off of his little stand, right through a patch of sunlight to where Ben stood in front of the stairs. Rey’s jaw fell open as she realized that the little droid was not just a figure, but the original model. 

She hurried down the rest of the stairs, stopping only to kneel down and touch the droid, feeling it humming with life beneath her palm. “You brought him with you.”

“I did.”

The droid chirped happily, then he rolled away, and resumed his position on his pedestal. Rey watched him go, then she stood up, and crossed her arms over her chest, looking Kylo up and down. “I can’t believe you’re here… How did you get here so quickly?”

“What do you mean?”

“How did you know the museum was in trouble? That Snoke was…”

Kylo froze, his shoulders tensing even further than they already had, which she hadn’t even thought possible until she saw it happen. A shaky breath left his voice modulator, followed by a subtle inhale, “I was already here.”

Realization started to dawn upon the night guard, and she stepped closer to Kylo, “What does that mean?” She asked, crossing her arms over her chest. “You live nearby?” 

“You could say that.”

She was tiring quickly of his cryptic answers, the whole encounter reminding her of the first time she’d met his figure, and just like that first night, she had every intention of getting Kylo to take off his stupid mask. “Who are you?” Her voice was confident now, though the underlying anxiety still shook beneath her calm surface. “Take off the mask.”

“Rey…”

“ _ Take off the mask. _ ”

Resignation washed over the too tall form of Kylo Ren, and with one last nod, he obeyed her command. His hands trembled slightly as he reached up, and pressed the button that would free him from his helm. They shook even more as he began to lift it up and over his head, the first strands of wavy gray and black hair falling out from beneath it. 

She wasn’t sure what she’d expected when he took off the helm, but when he took it all the way off and set it down upon the desk, she recognized the face behind it instantly. Sure, he wasn’t wearing his glasses that day, and he wasn’t wearing his typical manager suits, but it was him, she was certain. 

“ _ Larry? _ ” 

  
  
  
  


___

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the cliffhanger.


	7. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, we've reached the end. This chapter was... difficult, but it's a lot shorter than the others, so hopefully it's quick to read. I definitely owe the sprinters in the writing den another one for helping me finally find the motivation to end this. Anyway, enjoy, I'll be back in the closing notes.

 

They stared at each other for a moment as the impossible truth settled in, and everything about the museum started to make sense. There had always been something familiar about her manager, something she could never quite put her finger on. Though looking back on it, she definitely noticed a few of the habits he had in common with her Ben. 

He ran his hand through his hair in the exact same nervous manner, he stomped his foot when he started a fight… The now uncanny physical resemblance, despite the years that had clearly worn on him… He had that same large nose, the dark, wavy hair, the eyes that looked like they could see into her soul, the same height and build. 

“I’m sure you have a lot of questions.”

She nodded, “How the hell…?”

“When the Falcon crashed, I nearly didn’t make it out,” he confessed, “I was bruised, something was definitely broken, and I had what I’d later figure out was the world’s worst concussion. But… Those weren’t the reasons I was almost trapped.”

“No?”

He shook his head, “My father was the copilot, he… he was a lot worse off than I was…” Larry—Ben? Kylo?—leaned back on a nearby desk for support, his voice sounding progressively less steady than it had a moment ago, “He…”

Rey walked a little closer to him, “It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me,” she said, watching as a memory played out in front of his eyes.

Her manager had never gotten emotional in front of her, but now, like the Ben she’d grown to care for, she could see his emotions spilling out plain as day. His eyes were misty, and he sounded as if he were on the verge of crying. “I haven’t talked about this in forty years… I’ve never told anyone…”

“You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to say.”

“No… I’ve kept this to myself for so long… Someone needs to know what happened,” he said, and Rey gave him another nod as she prepared to listen to his story. “He didn’t die immediately… When we crashed, I was passing in and out of consciousness… The first thing I heard was his voice telling me to wake up, and when I finally did… he was going… he… he died in my arms.”

“I’m… I’m so sorry,” Rey said, walking up beside him and leaning against the desk. 

“He told me to take the tablet and run before he died, and I refused… I stayed with him the entire time. I couldn’t leave him, Rey, I couldn’t…” Tears openly spilled onto his cheeks as she watched him speak. “I wasted so much time with Snoke and the first order… I didn’t have enough time to make up for all I did. By the time I came to my senses,  he’d been gone for ten minutes and there were sirens. I had to leave the tablet behind. I didn’t know where I was… I didn’t want to risk getting caught and interrogated by authorities… I had no idea this galaxy didn’t know what was happening in mine.”

“So you ran?”

Kylo gave her a nod, “I did, and I hid for a few years until I heard they were opening the museum, that’s when I took up the Night Guard position.”

“Did you know what would happen? With the tablet in the museum?”

“No, I had no idea. It scared the hell out of me. I spent the first night hiding in the first floor avoiding my parents. I didn’t want them to recognize me… I still looked exactly like my figure, so I spent the night bonding with BB-8 in the manager’s office.”

She could imagine it. A young Kylo in his first night as the guard, patrolling the museum casually as he checked to be sure that no one had tried to sneak inside after hours. She could see him being utterly shocked as miniature x-wings raced past his face, as the figures commenced battle with one another like they were still home. 

It hit her then what he had just implied with this latest dose of information, “Your parents… They… they don’t know you’re their son? None of them know you’re Ben Solo?”

He looked like he didn’t know what to say in response to that for a few seconds, then his confusion morphed into intense sorrow. “No, they don’t know.”

“Why not?”

Kylo swallowed nervously, and ran his hand through his graying hair, “I couldn’t face them at first, the pain… everything that had happened—it was all too fresh.” He shifted slightly as he leaned against the countertop, “I didn’t know how to tell them, then when I was about to, Snoke moved on the tablet for the first time, and I realized that everything that happened in the last year before the crash had to remain a secret. If they knew about it, Snoke would’ve used it to hurt everyone I loved all over again.”

It made sense. Snoke had succeeded in doing that very thing the night before, even without anyone knowing about who Ben was. But his explanation still didn’t answer one thing. “How the hell did you hide from them? They must’ve been able to recognize you for at least the first ten or fifteen years.”

At this, Kylo chuckled, which she thought was an odd reaction, until he sighed. “Before I started as the night guard, I had a bit of an obsession with Superman. Reading those comics, watching the movie… Those were my escape from all that had happened, so I took a page from Clark Kent’s book, and started wearing glasses.”

Rey paused as she processed the odd explanation, then she began to laugh in disbelief. “So Superman’s disguise… worked? In real life?”

“Not just that, Rey,” Kylo explained, then he reached out a hand behind him, and his own lightsaber flew into his hand seemingly of its own accord, causing Rey’s eyes to widen. Kylo Ren was real. BB-8 was real. And now the force itself was truly real. It wasn’t just something that belonged in the ether in his home galaxy, it was a universal thing. It was all around them. “I quite literally had to use the force to ensure no one ever found out who I really was.”

“But… But they thought it came from your home… Not here…”

“They thought that because I told them that. I told them everything the data didn’t.” Kylo’s eyes unfocused, and she could tell without him having to say anything that he was no longer seeing the museum in front of them, but instead the past, where everything had started. “All the force does to them is wake them up. Why it does that? I have no idea.”

“Snoke said last night that it was an unintended side effect, that he’d only intended to use it to make himself more powerful.”

Kylo hummed quietly, then he looked up at the ceiling, where the Falcon replica had mercifully managed to stay intact during the battle. “When I realized that they couldn’t touch the force, I was relieved. It made keeping Snoke away from the rest of the museum that much easier. I worked with BB-8 over the first few weeks figuring out just how to keep things under control here, what ground rules to set, what doors to lock, when to shut down the elevators. We thought of everything, and the system for the most part ran perfectly.”

“Until it didn’t?”

He nodded. “Until it didn’t,” he said, then he ran his hand through his graying hair again, “I kept things running smoothly until I realized one day that I was getting to be far too old for this. The long hours, the late nights… I couldn’t do it anymore, so I started slowly letting more night guards into the fold. Some of them would stick around awhile, and others would leave on their first night.”

Rey frowned, suddenly realizing that she knew very little about the night guards that preceded her and succeeded him. Swallowing nervously, she crossed her arms over her chest. “What happened when they left?”

Kylo froze, then, a tension filling the air between them as a thousand possible scenarios ran through Rey’s head. She was reminded for the first time that despite him telling her that he’d redeemed himself before crash landing on Earth, he had once been a villain. He had once manipulated and tortured people and certainly killed them before realizing the error of his ways. “Did… Did you… hurt them?” she asked cautiously, closing her eyes in anticipation of the answer. 

“No, no, god no,” he replied, putting his hands up. “That’s not who I am anymore. No, I wiped their memories as harmlessly as I could, then set them free. I couldn’t have anyone knowing what went on in the museum behind closed doors at night.”

Rey breathed a sigh of relief as her eyes opened, then she began to sway lightly on her feet. “And what about the Falcon? All that information… How did that get there?”

Another pained look crossed Kylo’s features, and his gloved hands clenched into tight fists—but not angry ones— as his eyes grew misty. “It was a long journey from home to here,” Kylo explained. “My father and I didn’t have much to do on the journey… We didn’t even know where we were going, we just knew we had to bury the tablet somewhere no one from home would find it.

“So I started a data log of everything we knew. I pulled from books, old holo-pads, everything I could find, and I began to tell the story of what happened at home. It took me the entire journey, well, it took the both of us.” A sad smile grew on his face as he spoke about his father, and a lone tear began to streak down his cheeks as he looked back down at the ground. “We didn’t finish it before we came out of Hyperspace, which is why nothing from that last year is on there. 

“At first we weren’t sure why we were doing it. There wasn’t any need for it… We were going to turn around and head back home immediately… But the whole time I had this feeling in my gut that something was about to go horribly wrong. I could never place it, but it was always there.

“On our way to Earth I worked on repairing the relationship I had with my father, we started… We started to act like a father and son again. It almost felt like…” 

His sentence trailed off, and Rey found herself almost envious of Kylo as he talked about the relationship he had with his father. Sure, it hadn’t been perfect and they’d both damaged one another and caused the other pain, but in the end they’d cared for one another. He’d had a father who’d loved him, who gave a damn about him, which was more than she’d been able to say for herself in her twenty three years of existence.

Kylo glanced at her then. “Are you alright? I know it’s a lot to take in…”

“No, I’m fine, I’m just… just keep talking.”

He looked at her apprehensively for a moment, then after a brief pause, he continued telling her what had led to the Falcon’s unfortunate collision with the Earth. “It felt like it used to when I was a kid. When he’d take me out with him on his trips in the Falcon even when mom didn’t want him to, and it was just me, him, and the sky streaking blue.” There was a mystified look in his eyes that reminded her of his father’s younger self, the Solo part of him shining through for just one, bright, beautiful moment under her gaze, and she felt like she could see his home galaxy and the interior of the real Millennium Falcon reflected in his eyes.

“I could never figure out why the ship crashed. Everything had been working perfectly. The ship was old, but… We shouldn’t have crashed…” His voice broke on the last word, breaking a little piece of her heart with it. 

It hit her then that he didn’t know. He hadn’t heard Snoke’s words about his role in the Falcon’s fatal collision. He had no idea that the ship had been tampered with and that there was nothing they could have done—no matter how experienced of pilots he or Han were—and they would’ve only been able to save themselves if they were warned. She took in a deep breath as she mustered up her courage to tell him the truth of what had happened to his father’s ship. 

“Snoke told you—the other you— last night that he tampered with the ship when you invaded the Supremacy to kill him.” Kylo blinked at her a few times, disbelief written plainly across his face as he looked up at her. “Well, he had the Falcon tampered with.” 

She was only met with more silence from Kylo, and he tilted his head toward the ground as his eyes focused themselves on the floor, suddenly very fascinated by the hardwood. “Kylo?” she asked softly, getting his attention back on her. “It wasn’t your fault. The crash? Your father’s death? None of it was your fault. There was nothing you could have done.”

Kylo shook his head at this, but didn’t say anything in protest as he moved on from the subject. “What else do you want to know?”

She thought on this for a moment, tapping on her left arm quietly with her right index finger as she thought through all of the questions she’d walked into this room with. So far he’d managed to answer most of them. Why there was data on the Falcon, why the data stopped, how he and his father came to be the pilots, and how the Falcon had crashed, but there was still so much she didn’t understand… “Where was Luke in all of this?” she asked, then before he could say anything she put up a finger, “I know Ben—other you— could tell me this, too, but I want to hear it from you. What happened to Luke?”

Kylo’s eyes unfocused again as the memory came to him. “My father and I found him after combining map pieces found on both Artoo and BB-8… once we realized where he was we plotted a course for the planet he was on… I’ll never forget the name.”

“What was it?” 

“Ahch-To. He was on an island on Ahch-To… he’d decided to hide out there after I… went dark…” He shuddered slightly as more memories passed him by, and Rey wondered just how much his time on the dark side still impacted him forty years after it had all ended. “Needless to say, he was surprised to see me. We spent the first day just talking about everything that had happened, my father and I tried to beg him to help us after that, but my uncle had grown tired—of everything. So he sent us off to the Supremacy with well wishes and asked us to make sure my mother knew he was alright…” again, he choked up, and realization dawned on his face. “I never got to say goodbye.”

Rey wasn’t sure what compelled her to do it, but without thinking she stepped forward and threw her arms around the man who had once simply been her manager. Kylo stuttered slightly in shock, but then he returned her embrace, not pulling her too close but still taking comfort in the action. “They’re still here,” she reminded him. “It’s not too late, you can still say everything you didn’t get the chance too.”

He shook his head. “I can’t, Rey, it’s…”

“It’s what?”

“It’s too painful. I just… I can’t,” he said as he pulled away from the embrace. “I’ve answered all your questions. Unless there’s something else you want to know, I’m going to go home.” With that, he began to take a step back, grabbing his helmet off of the desk behind him as he prepared to leave the museum for the day. 

She wasn’t going to let him get away that easily. “No. It’s been forty years, and Snoke’s gone now. When they wake up tonight, I want you to be here. I want you to tell them who you are. They deserve to know what happened to their son, to know who you’ve become because… Kylo— _ Ben— _ you’ve come so far. Don’t turn back now.”

A look of surprise crossed his face, and he stared at her for a moment in disbelief, though she could tell he was considering it. After several minutes of silence, Kylo gave her a nod. “I’ll do it, I’ll be here tonight, but I’ll need you to help me.”

“Of course.”

Kylo swallowed nervously as he looked around, his mouth twitching as he considered something else. “We’ll have to spend a good bit of time cleaning this place up.”

Rey winced as she looked around the battle scarred museum. Lightsaber and blaster marks now coated the walls and floors, and several windows now had cracks along their panes. Outside, she could see bloodstains from where she’d tried to kill Hux and where Ben had been shot by Hux just moments later. Explaining those to authorities was going to be fun. They were probably going to have to close down the museum for the time being, which was going to be even more fun to explain to the general public. 

Kylo smirked as if he could tell what she was thinking, and for all she knew of the force, he could and he’d been reading her mind the entire time. “I’ll have to use the force to control what they see and remember,” he said, then he began to make his way toward the exit again. “We should probably get going. I’ve no doubt you’re as exhausted as I am.”

She laughed lightheartedly. “You’d be right,” she said, yawning as it began to hit her how exhausted she truly was. She’d been awake since the early hours of the previous morning, which altogether added up to become a good twenty eight or so hours. The only reason she’d lasted as long as she did was likely due to the adrenaline that had fueled her during the battle, but now it was wearing off, and she was starting to feel like she’d collapse then and there if she didn’t get some sleep soon. 

“I’ll see you tonight, then, Rey,” Kylo promised her, then he walked into his office, and shut the door behind him, indicating the conversation was closed. 

She stood there for a moment, processing everything she’d just learned as she looked around the museum. Suddenly everything about the building made sense, every story had been pieced together, tied up in a neat little bow. She now knew why the Falcon had crashed, who had caused it, what had led up to the crash, and how Kylo Ren had kept the story of his home planet alive and by his side despite being so many light years away. 

A part of her still couldn’t believe he was alive. She’d known it was a possibility that either Ben or Han had survived the crash, but still to realize that Larry was actually Ben and Kylo had sent her mind into a tailspin. How in the hell hadn’t she noticed before? Sure the years had taken their toll on him, and Larry’s face had far more creases and marks, his hair was fair greyer, and he was a little bit hunched over, but she still should’ve noticed the similarities. 

But she had, hadn’t she? She’d noticed the way he ran his hand through his hair, and his mouth twitched, and the way he looked when he talked about Ben or Kylo. He always looked haunted by the figure of the man he’d been, and she remembered the day after her first night working as the night guard when he caught her yelling at his figure. There was something far too knowledgeable about the way he’d asked  _ “Did he give you trouble last night?” _ and said,  _ “There’s more to this one than meets the eye.” _

Still she supposed the two men had their differences. Larry—the real Ben—had a slightly smaller nose than his figure, his eyes just a pinch bigger and his lips not quite as full. There were definitely little things that could throw someone off if they tried to compare the two men. The glasses and the business suits on top of it all certainly didn’t help. They were a far cry from his dramatic black robes and the helm he’d worn as Kylo Ren. 

A smile grew on Rey’s face as she began to walk out of the museum, one that only grew more broad as she stepped out onto the snow covered ground and into the sunlight. They’d done what had seemed impossible. They’d finally brought an end to a war that had been waged over what must’ve been close to a century, and stopped Snoke from spreading it into another galaxy. Victory coursed through her veins, which was only made better by the sight of the dust pile where Snoke had finally fallen to the ground at Ben’s hands. 

Yet she knew their work was far from over. They still had to repair the museum, and Kylo still had to tell Han and Leia who he really was. He had to finally earn his closure. These were all things she knew they were capable of, though. If they could win last night’s horrendous battle, they could win anything. She was certain of it. 

With that in mind, Rey stepped out into the city looking forward to the future and all it promised to bring. While she’d always miss the air of mystery her first few weeks at the museum had held, she had a feeling things were about to get a whole lot better as the nights went on, and if she were being honest?

She couldn’t wait.

**_A month later…_ **

The museum was bustling with life as Rey walked toward it at the start of her shift. From two blocks down the road she could hear the thumping of the base from the music Poe—at least, she assumed it to be him— was blasting from the iPod Larry had given him. As she drew closer, she recognized the tune as Earth, Wind, and Fire’s September, and she threw her head back into a fit of laughter. 

After the big battle a month ago, it had taken them nearly two weeks to get the museum repaired from the battle, which mostly consisted of replacing doors and wall panels that had been brutally beaten by lightsabers. Larry—Kylo— had force commanded construction crews to conveniently forget what they saw when they went in there. He and Rey had cleaned up the puddles of blood themselves when they returned to the museum that night. After all, even if it was closed for business during the day, it still needed a manager and a night guard. Once they were finished, it truly looked—from the outside, at least—like nothing had happened. 

As she entered the museum on—what number was it now? She’d lost count—this night, she felt excitement running through her veins. Things were finally getting back to normal now that everything was out in the open. In fact, they were better than normal. 

The beat from the music grew louder as Rey pushed open the door to her workplace to find that a majority of her friends were already present in the lobby and dancing. To her left, Poe—complete with BB-8 twittering away at his feet— and Finn were spinning one another around the makeshift dance floor with looks of pure glee, so caught up in the sight of each other that they didn’t even notice Rey as she walked in. 

It didn’t offend her much, she was looking for someone else anyway. 

Looking out over the lobby by the main stairwell, she could see Ben leaning against a railing with his head hung low in a state of sorrow. Ever since he’d learned the truth about how his story had ended, both he and Kylo had been in an odd sort of grieving state. They’d brought Kylo in a few nights to give the two men some time to talk, but nothing seemed to do them much good. 

Well, in Ben’s case, nothing except for being in Rey’s company. 

The Night Guard ascended the staircase without him meeting her gaze, though she suspected he knew it was there. “Hey, stranger,” she said as she approached, pressing a gentle kiss to the side of his head. 

Ben leaned into the touch, then he turned and wrapped his arms around her waist fully, causing her to yelp in delighted shock as he lifted her up and spun her around. The motion nearly made her dizzy, and she clung to him for dear life until he set her back down on the ground. 

Once she was back on her feet, she looked up into his eyes, resting her chin on his black-clad shoulder as she ignored the party down below. “What’s on your mind?”

A pained expression crossed his face. “The usual,” he answered, then he sighed, “I know I should be over it. It didn’t even happen to me, but… Rey…”

She reached down and took one of his hands in hers. “I know.” With her spare hand, she reached up and caressed his cheek. “It’ll take time, Ben, don’t rush yourself.”

He smiled at her, though it was one of those little corner of the mouth smiles rather than one that reached his eyes. “I will.” 

“Do you want to join the party?”

“Have I ever wanted to?”

They shared a laugh, and Rey pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek. “Fair point.”

They stayed like that for a while, looking out over the celebration as it grew, with more residents walking down the main stairwells or out of the elevators by the minute. At some point the song changed to another celebratory tune, but neither of them took notice, both of them were simply too busy taking in all that had happened. 

“It’s pretty amazing, though,” Rey said after a while, toying with a loose thread on Ben’s cape. 

“What is?”

“Snoke created the tablet to make himself stronger… To render the rest of the galaxy into submission against him while he created more chaos and death, and yet… Every night it’s brought life.”

Ben hummed his assent, then he wrapped an arm around her waist. “It brought me you.”

A blush crept up her cheeks, and she leaned her head against his chest. “Were you always this much of a sap back home?” 

A soft chuckle left him, then he pointed with his free hand down to where the true Kylo Ren stood with his parents, talking with them by the front desk while they occasionally ducked to avoid the flying miniatures. “Does he look like a ‘sap’ to you?”

Rey watched Kylo for a moment, observing the way he moved as he spoke with Han and Leia. He seemed relaxed for the first time since she’d met him, his shoulders had lost their tension. After all this time, with everything out in the open he was finally allowed to be himself again. He’d finally gotten the closure he’d always longed for with his parents, and even the whole of the resistance. Despite everything he’d been through, all those years of loneliness, he’d finally found peace. 

If that made him a sap, well, he’d earned the right to be. 

“He looks happy,” Rey said, smiling as she turned to look at Ben. “So do you.”

His grin was soft, but present as he stared down at her. “I am.”

And for that moment, everything felt perfect, like it had all fallen into place. The Skywalker’s tragic saga had finally come to its long awaited end—in another  _ galaxy _ of all places, but an end nonetheless. Things were finally winding down at the museum, and while a part of Rey almost missed those early days of adventure at the museum, she was glad it was in the past. 

At some point, Rey’s eyes drifted down to Ben’s lips, and lingered there for perhaps a touch too long, creating a sense of anticipation in the air between them. She wondered if it would always feel like this between them, if it would always feel like it had that first time when he’d spun her into his arms and surprised her. As they came together this time, she got the feeling the answer was a definitive yes. 

Ben met her in the middle more gently than he ever had, their initial coming together just the faintest brush of his lips against hers, but she was quick to deepen the kiss as she turned her body to face his fully. Her hand came up to caress his cheek, which still felt so agonizingly real in the nighttime hours that she could forget what happened when the sun came up and another wave of contentment washed over her. 

For once in her life, she wasn’t alone. She was surrounded by people, friends, and someone she loved. She may not have had much of a life beyond the museum, but if she were being honest, she was perfectly fine with that. After all, she’d always been able to get by with close to nothing. Now she had something, even if it wasn’t what people traditionally sought after. 

As a gloved hand rested on her waist, Rey gently pulled away, and rested her forehead against his. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For saving me.”

“Rey, you saved me.”

“But you did it first, so thank you.”

Ben kissed her again briefly. “I’d do it again,” he promised her, then he stepped back, and held out his hand. 

“What are you doing?” she squeaked, staring at the gloved palm in front of her. 

“I’m… I’m trying to ask you to dance.”

“You? Ben Solo? Dancing voluntarily?” she asked in disbelief, though she quickly took his hand. “You’re still full of surprises.”

Ben chuckled as he tugged on her hand, leading her down the main stairwell and out onto the dance floor as people made room for them. Behind the desk, Poe announced that he’d be playing a slow one, and the song shifted to an older, classic rock tune she hadn’t heard in ages. She cried out in delight as Ben spun her around, then pulled her back in as they began to sway on the dance floor. 

Rey looked around them at where the rest of the museum’s inhabitants had started to do the same. Both versions of Han and Leia were paired off on opposite sides of the room, behind the desk, Finn and Poe were also holding one another close, and even Kylo himself had joined in with a group of stormtroopers that were really dancing mockingly more than anything. Still, she supposed it was better than nothing. It was certainly more than she’d expected from him. 

Across the room, Kylo’s aging eyes met hers, and the corners of his mouth twitched up in the hint of a smile. Rey returned it, then he gave her a nod and her attention was turned back onto Ben, who’s eyes hadn’t left her the entire time. 

“It’s all still surreal, isn’t it?” Ben asked, holding the night guard a little bit closer. 

Rey beamed at him as she leaned up, and gently pressed her forehead against his. “A little, yeah, but… I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Not even if I could stay awake during the day?” His voice grew sorrowful and quiet as he asked her the question, and she reached up a hand to caress his cheek. 

She took in a deep breath. “Ben, I don’t care that we only have the night,” she said, pressing a brief kiss to his lips. “I told you, I’ll take you in whatever capacity I can have you. I don’t care how much time we have, only that we have it at all.”

Ben leaned forward then and kissed her a bit more forcefully, but sweetly as they continued to sway. His lips were still so soft against hers, so warm and comforting, and for a moment she forgot about the outside world. She forgot about who and what they were and the rest of the people in the museum as they kissed, the whole thing reminding her of when they’d been in the elevator just before the battle and he’d lifted her from the ground as if they didn’t have a tomorrow. Luckily they had a thousand of those, but she’d be more than happy with receiving kisses like that every night.

When he pulled away, he sighed as he looked down at her. “I think I might love you.”

Another grin spread on Rey’s face, “I think I might love you, too,” she said, then she and Ben resumed their dance across the museum’s floor. The world seemed to be nonexistent outside of the museum, like they’d be able to dance on into the end of time itself instead of just the dawn. After a lifetime of loneliness, Rey had finally found somewhere she could be happy, somewhere she could feel safe, somewhere she could call a home. 

Briefly, she glanced back at where Kylo was now lurking in the shadows, and at first she thought he seemed sad, but upon further inspection there was a smile on his face as he watched his parents dancing on into the night. The realization brought her relief; he’d already suffered enough, and now he, like her had found contentment. They’d both found what they’d been looking for, their stories folded up and put away to be read another time. 

At last the storybook came to a close, and as the lights twinkled above them and the music played on, the future had never looked brighter. As she danced across the floor with Ben, one thing was clear to her; she couldn’t wait to read the next part.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO that's it! Thanks to everyone who read this weird, weird little idea of mine and decided that it was worthy of spending your time on... I don't really have much to say other than ... IDK read my other stuff now. I'm always writing. See y'all next time.


End file.
